From leading protests against the rigged parliamentary elections of 2011 to investigating the corruption of Russia’s elites to seeking to unseat Presdient Vladimir Putin, Alexei Navalny was relentless in his nearly two-decade-long campaign against corruption in and around the Kremlin. Putin responded as any Russian despot would.
NEW YORK – Back in 2013, when Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was facing bogus criminal charges, I recalled when my great-grandfather, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, compared Russia to a tub full of dough. “You put your hand down in it, down to the bottom,” and “when you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains.” But then, “before your very eyes,” the dough returns to its original state – a “spongy, puffy mass.” Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony more than a decade later proves that little has changed.
NEW YORK – Back in 2013, when Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was facing bogus criminal charges, I recalled when my great-grandfather, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, compared Russia to a tub full of dough. “You put your hand down in it, down to the bottom,” and “when you first pull out your hand, a little hole remains.” But then, “before your very eyes,” the dough returns to its original state – a “spongy, puffy mass.” Navalny’s death in a remote Arctic penal colony more than a decade later proves that little has changed.