Has Putin stamped out all opposition?

Photos: AP Images

No one was shocked to hear that Alexei Navalny, Vladimir Putin’s charismatic nemesis, collapsed and died in a remote penal colony after yet another stint in solitary confinement. But the questions still remain: Why did Putin see him as a threat? Why did he return to Russia to an almost certain death sentence? And with Navalny out of the picture, does the opposition movement have any chance?

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he news that came from Russia on Friday afternoon was eminently predictable — but still sent shockwaves around the world. Alexei Navalny, the most prominent opposition leader to arise against Vladimir Putin in recent years, had died in prison.

The official announcement declared that, Navalny, 47, had collapsed and died during his daily walk from “sudden death syndrome,” which can occur for a number of reasons. The world, of course, understands that this is code for political assassination — the latest in a long string of killings that seem to be Putin’s favored method for clearing away his opponents.

Just a day earlier, Navalny was seen joking on a video link with the judge in a Russian court. Wearing a black prison uniform, Navalny appeared to be in a good mood as he said to the judge, “Your Honor, I will send you my account number so you can use your huge salary as a federal judge to ‘warm up’ my personal bank account, because I am running out of money.”

The camera in the court then showed the judge, as well as the other people present, smiling and enjoying Navalny’s wit.

On Wednesday, a day before this appearance, and two days before his death, Navalny posted on X (formerly Twitter) his final tweet: “The Yamal prison decided to break Vladimir’s record of fawning and pleasing the Moscow authorities. They just gave me 15 days in solitary confinement.”

Vladimir is the district where Navalny had been incarcerated for most of the last three years, in Penal Colony Number 2 — until he disappeared for two weeks this past December, only to reappear in the “Polar Wolf” penal colony in Yamalo Nenets Autonomous Okrug, which Navalny nicknamed “Yamal” in his tweet.

This final punishment was the 27^th of its kind that Navalny had suffered, and it came just ten days after the previous one had ended. In the past year alone, Navalny spent no less than 308 days in an isolation cell.

The “Polar Wolf” is located just 61 kilometers from the Arctic Circle, in a region where winter temperatures can plummet to -50° Celsius (-58° Fahrenheit). In the isolation room where Navalny spent so much of his time, there was a small window at the top of the wall, which left the room stifling and steaming in the summer and freezing in the fall and winter.