He graduated from high school in 1993. He studied at the People's Friendship University of Russia's law faculty and then at the Financial University from 1999 to 2001. In 2010, he took part in a six-month course at Yale University as part of the Yale World Fellows program. Navalny also practiced as a lawyer.

CHIEF ORGANIZER OF MASS PROTESTS

Navalny began his political activities at the age of 24 in the social liberal party Yabloko (Apple) and became deputy head of the party’s Moscow branch in 2004. He also played an active role in establishing an anti-corruption organization and the group “Da!” (Yes!). However, after he demanded the resignation of Yabloko's leader, Grigory Yavlinsky, he was expelled from the party. Not long afterwards, he announced the nationalistic “Narod” (The People) Russian National Liberation Movement with others.

Nevertheless, he became nationally known as an anti-corruption blogger. He wrote about suspicious dealings within Russian oil companies, banks, and ministries on his blog, and in 2011, launched his website "RosPil". The blogger collected contracts and tender announcements that raised suspicion of misuse of public funds.

He soon stepped forward as a prominent figure in the Russian opposition. He was one of the main organizers of the mass protests in Moscow after the 2011 parliamentary and the 2012 presidential elections, held in response to alleged electoral fraud. As the Wall Street Journal reported, he is the politician whom Vladimir Putin fears the most.

After the rigged parliamentary elections, on his initiative, Russia experienced the largest wave of protests in its modern history, demanding clean and fair elections and action against corruption.

However, the authorities brutally suppressed the protests, and the election results remained in place, even though the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation itself confirmed 11 percent of the protocols alleging potential fraud.

Soon after, the challenger found himself in the midst of an extensive smear campaign. His opponents accused him of being driven by personal gain in his exposés, which were suggested by the controversial economic criminal proceedings against him. In 2013, the Moscow court froze the assets of Alexei and his brother Oleg, and in 2014, they were both placed under house arrest.

According to the indictment, the brothers embezzled more than 26 million rubles from the Russian subsidiary of the Yves Rocher cosmetics company through advantageous delivery contracts. However, several executives of the French company stated that the company did not suffer any losses. In another case, a Kirov court sentenced him to five years in prison and a fine of one million rubles, although the sentence was later suspended by an appellate court.

RAN FOR PRESIDENT

With a modest budget and anti-corruption slogans, he ran in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, where he surprisingly came in second with 27 percent of the votes behind Putin’s candidate, Sergei Sobyanin.

Navalny's main activity was not to acquire political positions but to critique Putin's entire oppressive system. With his organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which started in 2011, embarrassing corruption cases linked to Putin and his closest associates were uncovered. For example, the FBK publicly revealed that Putin had a palace worth 1.35 billion dollars – equivalent to 397 billion forints at the time – near the Black Sea in Gelendzhik, as discussed in a two-hour video.

In 2013, they exposed how the elections could have been tampered with in Sobyanin's favor in the Moscow mayoral election, among other cases, unraveling politicians in Putin's party, United Russia, who had interests in offshore companies.

Navalny’s organization revealed the defense minister, Sergey Shoygu, owned an 18 million dollar villa near Moscow, and that Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov owned luxury items he could not afford on his official salary, such as a 620 thousand dollar watch and a yacht registered under the Maltese flag, while living in a 7.1 million dollar villa.

But it was Navalny who first exposed that Wagner Group leader Yevgeny Prigozhin had a troll army at the service of the Kremlin.

He did not participate in the 2016 parliamentary elections. For the 2018 elections, he introduced the idea of tactical voting, asking those opposing Putin's party, United Russia, to support a unified candidate, thereby augmenting the opposition's chance of success.

The election campaign was arduous; in June, he was sentenced to 25 days of detention for organizing illegal protests and violating the assembly law, and then arrested again in September before he could speak at a rally.

On December 24, 2017, he announced he had gathered enough endorsements to run against Putin in the March presidential election.

However, the following day, the election commission rejected his candidacy, stating that because of an economic crime for which he received a suspended sentence in 2017, he could not run for public office for ten years.

After a Moscow court ordered the shutdown of his fundraising foundation at the beginning of 2018, he organized a protest for the boycott of the elections. Authorities detained him and then released him without recording an interrogation. In February, his website was put on a blacklist by the Russian mass communication and telecommunications authority after the release of an investigative video. After the elections, during another protest, he was arrested again with about 300 others.

POISONED WITH A SPECIAL NERVE AGENT

On August 20th, 2020, he fell ill on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. An emergency landing was made to take him to a clinic in Tomsk. He fell into a coma and required a ventilator in the hospital. Allegedly, he had only been drinking tea that morning, which led to speculation that something might have been mixed into his drink. His wife insisted that he be transported to Berlin.

Even Putin had to explain the situation, who, in his public statements, never referred to his biggest rival by name.

German lab tests indicated he was poisoned with a new type of Novichok nerve agent, which can only be produced in highly equipped laboratories.

His poisoning caused diplomatic tensions between Germany, the European Union, and Russia.

After leaving the hospital, Navalny recuperated in Germany for a while, but he returned to Russia in January 2021. However, his flight landed at a different Moscow airport than scheduled, and upon exiting the terminal, he was immediately arrested by the police.

Navalny wanted to return to Russia to show he would not be intimidated even after an unsuccessful assassination attempt and to continue his activism; however, he would never have the opportunity to do so in freedom again. After his arrest on January 17, 2021, he was sentenced in February for violating his 2014 court sentence and received a prison term. On March 31st, he started a hunger strike in prison, claiming he was denied access to doctors he trusted and was not receiving proper medical care.

PRISON BEYOND THE ARCTIC CIRCLE

For a long time, it was not known where the Russian opposition politician was, but it was later revealed that he had been transferred to a prison camp beyond the Arctic Circle, in the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug. Navalny, who was already in critical condition, did not have his life made any easier in prison, reporting that:

for a hundred nights in a row, he was forced to listen to the same speech by Putin every evening.

The prison staff called this "morale-building activity," adding that the recording was from the president's 2023 parliamentary speech.

While being incarcerated, he was also on trial for another criminal case: in August of last year, behind closed doors, he was sentenced to 19 years in prison. The trial took place over two hundred kilometers away from Moscow, in the Melekhovo penal colony, where he had been serving his previously imposed nine-year prison sentence. The Russian Federal Penitentiary Service announced the death of Putin's chief political adversary.

With his demise, a new chapter begins in Russian history, as the country has lost its most formidable opposition figure, who managed to confront the Kremlin even from prison.