Why Putin Wants Alexei Navalny Dead

From Vox: “In 2006, a lawyer named Alex­ei Naval­ny start­ed a blog where he wrote about cor­rup­tion in his home coun­try of Rus­sia. It’s the most promi­nent prob­lem under the regime of Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Rus­sia since 2000. Putin has sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly tak­en over the country’s inde­pen­dent media, oli­garchy, elec­tions, and laws to cement his own pow­er and wield cor­rup­tion to his advan­tage.

That’s what Naval­ny set out to expose. And in 2010, he pub­lished a ground­break­ing inves­ti­ga­tion into a state-owned trans­porta­tion com­pa­ny, Transneft, which was fun­nel­ing state mon­ey into the hands of its exec­u­tives. The post launched Naval­ny into pol­i­tics.

By 2016, he had become the face of Russia’s oppo­si­tion move­ment, run for may­or, and was run­ning for pres­i­dent against Putin him­self. Naval­ny was uni­fy­ing Russia’s oppo­si­tion like no politi­cian had before. That’s why the Krem­lin tried to kill him. Naval­ny sur­vived the assas­si­na­tion attempt, launch­ing a move­ment nev­er before seen in Rus­sia.”

To dive deep­er into why the Russ­ian gov­ern­ment wants Naval­ny dead, watch the Vox video above, then lis­ten to this infor­ma­tive report from the New York Times’ Dai­ly Pod­cast below.

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