Magnicidio

Alexéi Navalni no murió en vano

El 17 de enero de 2021, cuando el líder de la oposición rusa Alexéi Navalni abordó un avión hacia Moscú desde Berlín —donde lo habían atendido después de que fuera envenenado en Rusia con el agente nervioso novichock—, afirmó estar contento por volver a casa; pero conocía los riesgos que ello implicaba: una larga sentencia en prisión, la tortura... e incluso la muerte.

Navalni, que murió el 16 de febrero en una colonia penal en el Ártico, enfrentaba el dilema con que deben lidiar todos los disidentes políticos: vivir en el exilio hasta desvanecerse en la oscuridad, o enfrentar a un régimen opresivo y arriesgarse a convertirse en mártires.…  Seguir leyendo »

Around a year ago I received a letter from my alma mater: the Soviet gulag, where I spent nine years after being convicted of anti-Soviet activity, high treason and espionage, and from which I graduated in 1986. The letter was sent by Alexei Navalny from a shtrafnoy izolyator, or “shizo” for short, the most extreme type of punishment cell in the gulag. He told me he was reading my book, “Fear No Evil”, and was surprised by the similarity of our experiences.

In my nine years in prison I spent 405 days in shizo, a kind of torture by cold and hunger.…  Seguir leyendo »

People lay flowers for Alexei Navalny in St Petersburg, Russia, 17 February 2024. Photograph: Anatoly Maltsev/EPA

Alexei Navalny was one of the first to come out in support of Pussy Riot after our arrest in 2012. His birthday congratulations telegram arrived at my prison faster than anyone else’s. Laughing at enemies, loving life, he was full of vitality. On 16 February, he was killed in the Polar Wolf penal colony north of the Arctic Circle.

The loudest, clearest and brightest voice against Vladimir Putin’s regime has been murdered, despicably, out of sight. Before his murder, he was tortured for three years; a third of this time was spent in solitary confinement without proper food and clothing. Navalny was killed a month before the so-called “elections”.…  Seguir leyendo »

Alexéi Navalni, en Moscú en 2017. Oleg Nikishin (Epsilon/Getty)

Las noticias llegan lentamente al barracón de un campo penitenciario, y de la muerte de Alexéi Navalni solo me enteré ayer.

Cuesta transmitir mi conmoción. Cuesta ordenar tus ideas. El dolor y el horror resultan insoportables.

De todos modos no me quedaré callado. Diré lo que creo importante.

Yo no me planteo la pregunta de qué es lo que ha pasado con Navalni. No tengo ninguna duda de que lo han matado. Alexéi se ha pasado tres años bajo el control de las fuerzas de seguridad, que ya en 2020 le organizaron un atentado que fracasó. Hoy han llevado la operación hasta el final.…  Seguir leyendo »

“I know how easily people are killed in Russia”, Alexey Navalny told me over a decade ago as I interviewed him for a book I was writing. “But in the end, it’s a question of choice. You can keep silent, you can emigrate, or you can stay here and fight”, the Russian democracy activist said.

Navalny — the greatest opponent to Russian President Vladimir Putin in recent memory — paid a steep price for that decision to fight. He died in a prison north of the Arctic Circle, the Russian prison service said on Friday. He was 47. At the moment, we still don’t know the details of his death.…  Seguir leyendo »

Putin Didn’t Hate Navalny. He Envied Him.

It’s 2007, a warm, sunny spring day in Moscow. It’s my first rally, and I’m nervous. I’m 16, silly and shy, falling in love with courageous and loud people around me. I hear my quiet voice join others screaming, “Russia without Putin”. We lock our arms and together push the police out of the street. Russia could be free: It’s a new feeling for me. This is where I see Aleksei Navalny for the first time.

For the next 17 years, I watched my friend Aleksei rise from a Moscow blogger to a global moral and political figure, giving hope and inspiration to people around the world.…  Seguir leyendo »

La solitaria muerte de Alexéi Navalni

En 2013, cuando el crítico del Kremlin Alexéi Navalni se enfrentaba a un juicio por acusaciones falsas, recordé cómo mi bisabuelo, el líder soviético Nikita Jrushchov, comparaba a Rusia con un bol lleno de masa. «Si metes la mano hasta el fondo, cuando la sacas queda un pequeño agujero». Pero entonces, «ante tus ojos», la masa vuelve a su estado original: una mezcla «esponjosa e inflada». Más de una década después, la muerte de Navalni en una remota colonia penal del Ártico es prueba de lo poco que han cambiado las cosas.

La prisión en la que murió Navalni es particularmente brutal.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, his wife Yulia, opposition politician Lyubov Sobol and other demonstrators march in memory of murdered Kremlin critic Boris Nemtsov in downtown Moscow on 29 February, 2020. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP)

Alexei Navalny was the leading opponent of Vladimir Putin inside Russia – even from behind bars and often in solitary confinement.

He made his name while still a free man by unmasking the nature of the regime through corruption exposés, protests, and by trying to be a ‘normal’ politician in a system dominated by one other man.

Navalny’s death provides another, potent demonstration of the system Putin has constructed: a murderous personalist autocracy that continues to spread destruction and misery in its ongoing war on Ukraine.

We may never know the full details leading up to Navalny’s death in the ‘Polar Wolf’ prison colony within the Arctic Circle on 16 February.…  Seguir leyendo »

Alexéi Navalni en una manifestación de apoyo a los prisioneros políticos en Moscú, el 29 de septiembre de 2019.Sefa Karacan (Anadolu Agency/ Getty Images)

Mi país y el de Alexéi Navalni ya no existe. Una Rusia que destruye a sus hijos de esta manera no puede ser une terre des hommes, una tierra de los hombres. Este Estado que se hace llamar Federación Rusa y trae la muerte y la calamidad sobre el mundo entero y su propia población directamente no debería existir.

En la Rusia actual, Alexéi Navalni iba a perder inevitablemente su vida. Una dictadura significa que el pueblo calla y se regocija con la palabra del líder. El régimen veía una amenaza contra sí mismo en este hombre al que quiso callar encarcelándolo durante más de 20 años.…  Seguir leyendo »

People used to ask Alexey Navalny why, knowing the risks, he chose to go back to Russia in 2021 after he was poisoned with a rare nerve agent originally developed in the Soviet Union and almost died. Rather than return to face almost certain imprisonment, he could have stayed abroad to lead the resistance to Putin from the West.

His answer was simple: “Russia is my country, Moscow is my city, and I miss them”. His death in an Arctic penal colony prison, announced by the Russian prison service on Friday and confirmed by Navalny’s spokesperson on Saturday, shows the sordid depths to which Putin has dragged that country.…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrators hold placards reading 'Killers' and 'Russia without Putin' during a rally in front of the Russian embassy in Warsaw on February 16 following the announcement that Alexey Navalny had died. (Photo by Sergei GAPON / AFP) (Photo by SERGEI GAPON/AFP via Getty Images) Sergei Gapon/AFP/Getty Images

The announcement from the Russian prison service that Alexey Navalny, the most prominent Russian opposition leader, had died in prison at 47, sent ripples throughout the world and reached me in California when I woke up Friday morning. As someone who grew up between Ukraine and Russia, I used to go back to both countries to visit family every year. When I heard that Navalny had died, I immediately recalled the time I met him during a trip to Moscow in 2012, when I was 29 and some of the biggest anti-Putin protests were rocking Russia.

A journalist friend had taken me to a party hosted by a popular liberal radio station, and we immediately beelined toward a tall, pale man in the center of the room.…  Seguir leyendo »

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, autor del catálogo monumental que coló ya para siempre en la memoria de Occidente el horror de los campos de Stalin, lo inicia con una anécdota tan fría como escalofriante: en los hielos perpetuos de Vorkutá un grupo de hombres ha encontrado un animal prehistórico congelado. Puede que se trate de un pez o de un tritón, pero los del hallazgo no son precisamente exploradores que alimenten pasiones ictiológicas. De hecho, es alimento lo que les falta, de manera que se aplican a romper el hielo a golpes, extraen la carne que lleva esperándolos ahí algunas decenas de miles de años y se la zampan a bocados.…  Seguir leyendo »

Photos of Alexei Navalny hang on a fence at a monument to victims of Soviet occupation in Vilnius, Lithuania, on Saturday. (Mindaugas Kulbis/AP)

Vladimir Putin killed my friend Alexei Navalny this week. There will be a time and place to discuss the politics and how the free world should respond. For now, I want to share a few memories.

The Alexei Navalny I knew was super smart. For me, the sign of a true intellectual is the courage to change your mind. We disagreed about some things he had said in the past, particularly about the Caucasus and Crimea. He listened, and it felt to me he was rethinking some of his earlier statements. But he also pushed back, challenging my commitment to “neoliberalism” in the 1990s.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian opposition activist Vladimir Kara-Murza, left, and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, right. (Natalia Kolesnikova; Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images)

In the long line of people who have been victims of Soviet and Russian dictators, Alexei Navalny was extraordinary. He dedicated himself to unmasking the cynical, corrupt nature of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. And he succeeded, revealing the truth to the world.

He was so dedicated to exposing the nature of Putin’s regime that he chose to return to Russia to force his would-be murderers to make their villainy public. In going back, he showed the people of Russia and the world that he was not afraid — and that neither should they be afraid to act.

In a letter he wrote to one of us from prison, Navalny stated that the “virus” of freedom will never be killed and that hundreds of thousands of people will continue to fight for freedom and against the war in Ukraine.…  Seguir leyendo »

A memorial to the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, St. Petersburg, Russia, February 2024. Stringer / Reuters

The announcement on Friday that the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has died in a remote Russian prison colony has left observers of the country in shock. For years, the most fearless critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin and the pervasive corruption of Putin’s inner circle, Navalny had been serving a draconian 19-year sentence for extremism. Indeed, it was highly unlikely that he would ever be released as long as Putin was in power. But apparently, even that was not enough. According to the Russian prison service, Navalny collapsed after a short walk in the prison yard and lost consciousness and died soon after.…  Seguir leyendo »

El expresidente del Gobierno, Luis Carrero Blanco, junto al dictador Francisco Franco.

Cuando vi la serie de Movistar+ El día de mañana, sobre una buena novela de Ignacio Martínez de Pisón, no me sorprendió encontrarme con frases y detalles que no salían en el libro, pero sí con su significado.

Por ejemplo, cuando los protagonistas hablan, en los años 60, de la futura caída de la dictadura, un personaje femenino se muestra sin esperanza y dice que todo cambiará para que no cambie nada, la conocida teoría lampedusiana. Ideas que no se expresan en la novela, pero que son bien conocidas en la impugnación al sistema democrático actual y la Constitución que hace la izquierda alternativa.…  Seguir leyendo »

Carrero Blanco, ante la atenta mirada de Francisco Franco. Archivo

Hace cincuenta años, el 20 de diciembre de 1973, ETA asesinó al presidente del Gobierno. Frente a la opinión de que el magnicidio benefició al cambio político (y por tanto tuvo un efecto "positivo"), mi opinión, a la luz de las evidencias, es la contraria. El asesinato de Luis Carrero Blanco por ETA tuvo efecto cero en el cambio político hacia la democracia. Quizás, incluso, tuvo un efecto contrario: reforzó a los continuistas del Búnker en su resistencia hacia las reformas del régimen.

En cuanto a las teorías de conspiración nacional o internacional, son inconsistentes. ETA no precisaba que ningún misterioso "agente" les indicara las rutinas diarias de Carrero Blanco.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘India’s combative response to the bombshell allegations demonstrate once again that it is not a responsible global actor.’ Photograph: Vuk Valcic/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Watching news of Justin Trudeau’s explosive statement about intelligence indicating Indian involvement in the assassination of Hardeep Singh Nijjar did not shock those familiar with India’s security and intelligence operations. Friends and family of Sikh activists regularly express concern about our wellbeing due to a fear of being surveilled by Indian agents, and ultimately being subject to some form of violent reprisal.

The statements made in Canada’s parliament were finally an acknowledgement of the reality that young Sikhs like me have lived through for decades: Sikh dissidents expressing their support for an independent state may face the risk of imminent harm, even in the diaspora.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘Mohammed bin Salman – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, who, according to US intelligence officials, approved Khashoggi’s assassination – has managed a near complete rehabilitation of his increasingly autocratic regime.’ Photograph: Bandar Aljaloud/AP

Five years ago, Jamal Khashoggi walked into Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul to pick up a document he needed in order to marry his Turkish fiancée. The journalist never walked out. Inside the consulate, he was ambushed by a 15-member Saudi hit team, who suffocated him and dismembered his body with a bone saw. The death squad then slipped out of Turkey on two charter planes owned by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.

Since then, Mohammed bin Salman – Saudi Arabia’s crown prince and de facto ruler, who, according to US intelligence officials, approved Khashoggi’s assassination – has managed a near complete rehabilitation of his increasingly autocratic regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

Russian servicemen inspect part of the crashed private jet near the village of Kuzhenkino, Tver region, Russia, on Thursday, August 24. Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin — who the Russian aviation agency confirmed was a passenger on board a plane that crashed on Wednesday evening — seemed to be living on borrowed time.

Ever since June, when the warlord led his Wagner mercenaries in an uprising against his country’s military commanders, the Kremlin’s soft response had bewildered longtime Russia watchers.

Within the span of a few hours, Russian President Vladimir Putin switched from accusing Prigozhin of “treason”, and labeling his mutiny “a stab in the back of our troops and the people”, to allowing Belarus’ President Alexander Lukashenko to promise Prigozhin amnesty and a base for his fighters.…  Seguir leyendo »