'I have to stay' Why exile was never an option for Putin's leading critic

Had he remained outside Russia, Navalny may have been able to coordinate a powerful anti-war movement. Instead, he is silenced for ever

- Shaun Walker

For years, Alexei Navalny remained clear on a key message: he was a Russian F opposition he was determined politician and to stay in Russia.

Exile, he believed, would lead to political irrelevance, and calling on Russians to oppose Vladimir Putin from the safety of the west would mark him as a hypocrite.

Navalny, who died last week aged 47, while serving a lengthy prison term in an Arctic penal colony, stuck to this belief as the political climate in Russia deteriorated and the space for dissent narrowed ever further, and even after he was poisoned with novichok in 2020, leading to his ill-fated decision to return early the next year.

Russian authorities had tried various methods to shut Navalny up for more than a decade. Initially, some in the Kremlin thought he could be allowed to remain on the political scene as a release valve for disgruntled urban Russians. A dangerously good performance in the 2013 Moscow mayoral vote put paid to that. Instead, authorities moved to launch various criminal cases against him.

In 2014, Navalny was put under house arrest and his brother, Oleg, was given a three-and-a-half-year jail term, widely seen as a way to put pressure on him. Some suggested he might be more use to the opposition movement abroad and at liberty rather than in Russia and potentially sent to join his brother in jail.

Late that year, padding around his small apartment in a Moscow suburb wearing an ankle tag, Navalny scoffed at the idea that it might be better to leave. "If I want people to trust me then I have to share the risks with them and stay here. How can I call on them to take part in protests and so on if they are risking things and I am not?" he said.