Key moments in the life of Alexey Navalny

Alexey Anatolyevich Navalny posts leaked documents on his blog blowing the whistle on a $4 billion embezzlement scheme at the state-run oil pipeline operator, Transneft. The claim is vigorously denied by the head of the company and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Before 2010, Navalny had been known only to a fairly small online community.

He founds the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization scrutinizing corruption in the Russian government. A Moscow court subsequently orders its closure in 2018.

The Kremlin critic is convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to five years in prison. Navalny had been campaigning for the Moscow mayoralty and the ruling is seen as politically motivated. His unsuccessful run saw him come second behind President Putin’s candidate with 27% of the vote.

Navalny feels unwell while flying between the Siberian city of Tomsk and Moscow. The plane is diverted to Omsk in Siberia and the outspoken Russian opposition leader falls into a coma from a suspected poisoning. A Germany NGO sends a plane to Russia to evacuate him from the country.

Navalny recovers at a hospital in Berlin. The German government concludes the Kremlin critic was poisoned with Novichok, a type of nerve agent. The Kremlin repeatedly denies any involvement.

The opposition politician defiantly returns to Russia despite facing immediate arrest by authorities. Russian prison officials asked a court to replace his suspended sentence in a years-old case with a real jail term.

Navalny is sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security jail after being convicted on fraud charges. This is in addition to a two-and-a-half-year sentence for violating probation terms. The Putin critic says the charges are trumped up to silence him. In August, he is sentenced to a further 19 years in prison on extremism charges.

Navalny makes his first court appearance from a Siberian penal colony he was moved to in late December. He appears to be well, details his routine which sees him forced to take his daily walk in freezing temperatures at 6:30 a.m. and shows his spirit has not been broken by cracking jokes.

Navalny dies at the remote Arctic Circle penal colony he was moved to in late 2023. The prison service said the opposition leader “felt unwell after a walk” and “almost immediately” lost consciousness.