“Don’t give up,” that would be his message to the Russians if he was killed, Alexei Navalny once said. But the Russian protest movement has been crushed. The death of the charismatic and courageous opposition figure deprives Russian Putin opponents of hope for change. A report from Moscow.
A few hours after the Russian authorities announced the death of Alexei Navalny, a picture from Novosibirsk appeared in one of the Russian Telegram channels. It showed a woman standing alone in the cold and darkness, holding a self-painted sign in her hands: “Who’s next?” it said. The lone question was their answer to the death of Russia’s most influential and important opposition politician.