Alexei Navalny’s long struggle against President Putin began with a humorous blog and culminated in repeated demonstrations of his willingness to risk his own life. According to the Russian authorities on Friday, he has now died in prison.

Russia’s leading opposition voice has been silenced.

Other dissident figures went into exile or died in mysterious circumstances over the past decade, leaving Navalny as the last national figure with a dedicated following.

Though he had been arrested many times before, Navalny’s defining moment in the eyes of many Russians came after the attempt to assassinate him with Novichok. He recuperated in the sanctuary of a German hospital but chose to defy Putin and return to Russia in January 2021, knowing full well he would end up in prison.

After his inevitable arrest, he used a series of Moscow show trials to lay bare Russia’s ugliness and injustice.

He was then subjected to the harshest conditions in some of Russia’s worst prisons until his inevitable demise. The prison service in Yamalo-Nenetsk, where he was being held, announced his death on Friday, according to Reuters.

“Navalny sped up the Kremlin’s switch to dictatorial rule by a few years, as from the moment of his return nobody cared to even pretend to follow the law any longer,” opposition politician Gennady Gudkov told The Daily Beast. “And now the regime is completely doomed.”

From the day Navalny collapsed in agonizing pain on the floor of a plane as he tried to return home to Moscow from campaigning in Siberia, Russians wondered if he would continue his struggle; if he would risk his life once again. “My job here is to stay that guy who is not afraid. And I am not afraid!” he told Der Spiegel in his first interview after the attack.

He was convinced that the order for the assassination plot came from the very top. “I assert that Putin is behind the crime,” he said.

Ilya Yashin, a friend of Navalny for 20 years, said he has long been exhausted by constantly worrying about his friends being........

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