His death at the age of just 47 is thus raising some major questions about the circumstances.

"Let's make a thriller out of this movie, and in the case I were to be killed, let's

make a boring movie out of memory."

Navalny was born on June 4, 1976, in Butyn, a small town outside of Moscow, to an economist

mother and a military officer father.

His upbringing included frequent travel among various garrison towns and summers with his

grandmother outside Chernobyl; Navalny's family was among those evacuated after the 1986 nuclear

disaster.

On their way out, the family beheld the enforced attempted cover-up by Soviet officials.

Navalny obtained two degrees.

His first came from the People's Friendship University of Russia, where he studied law,

and the second from the Finance Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation,

where he studied finance.

It was as a student that Navalny first came into contact with systemic opposition to Vladimir

Putin.

He joined Yabloko, otherwise known as the Russian United Democratic Party.

The pro-democracy, pro-free market party was a major player in Russian politics in the

1990s, but by the time Navalny joined up, pro-Putin forces had united into an effective

bloc, and Putin himself had swayed many of Yabloko's former supporters.

According to Navalny's campaign website, he founded the Muscovite Protection Committee

in 2004.

It was a collection of groups opposed to infill development projects in Moscow, and was Navalny's

first action against the status quo of Russian society listed on the website's timeline.

The committee claimed credit for foiling several harmful construction projects.

But another effort of Navalny's four years later would put him on the national radar.

Starting in 2008, Navalny began drawing attention to corruption in state-owned corporations.

It was a safer way to target the political elite in Russia than a direct attack; many

of the company leaders were tied to Putin.

Navalny bought up shares to gain access to shareholder meetings and brought up financial

irregularities and opaque reporting.

He also formed another group, the Union of Minority Shareholders, and took several companies

to court on the Union's behalf.

Navalny's anti-corruption drumbeat was so loud and reached so many Russians that the

government was forced to recognize the problem at a scale of $31 billion in embezzled funds.

Two years later, Navalny followed up this campaign with a blog, RosPil, dedicated to

outing corruption in Russian business and government.

RosPil also gave the opposition movement a rallying cry in 2011; he labeled the pro-Putin

United Russia "a party of crooks and thieves."

The 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia were decried within and without its borders

for irregularities and alleged fraud.

Public outrage ran hot enough to spark widespread protests, and Alexei Navalny earned one of

his arrests when he took to the streets with his fellow Russians.

He became more outspoken about politics after the election and even ran a 2013 campaign

for mayor of Moscow that took Russian authorities by surprise when he finished with 27% of the

vote.

But Navalny's own politics were a source of controversy throughout his life, and they

cost him support and frustrated unity among opposition forces in Russia.

Navalny was an avowed nationalist, and his comments in favor of ethnic Russians and against

immigration and subsidies for minority republics alarmed many.

Yabloko expelled him from the party in 2007 over his rhetoric, and 14 years later, party

officials denounced him as "disastrous and dangerous for Russia" to Open Democracy.

Others accused him of racism, and there was a history of ethnic slurs in his writing.

Navalny also supported Russian aggression against the country of Georgia in 2008.

Some of these critiques were bolstered by state efforts.

While Navalny walked back some of his rhetoric later in life, he did not disavow his controversial

positions.

And as Russian observers told Euro News, the expectation among some in the West that he

represented an unblemished campaigner for liberal democracy, and that the movement around

him was naturally sympathetic to the West, were both mistaken.

After his run for mayor, Navalny continued to speak out against Putin and Russian corruption.

He faced trials and suspended prison sentences, put out an anti-corruption documentary, and

made a failed attempt at the Russian presidency.

Officially, Putin and his allies treated Navalny as a marginal figure, unworthy of even being

referred to by name.

But the government's professed indifference was hard to square with the events of August

20, 2020.

On that day, Navalny was boarding a flight from Siberia to Moscow when he started to

feel sick.

He was in excruciating pain and screaming, leading to an emergency landing, and an airlift

to Germany for care.

"I was poisoned.

I'm gonna die."

It was determined that Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent novichok, which can cause

symptoms like paralysis, seizures, and death.

The Kremlin was blamed for the poisoning, a claim they fervently denied.

"I said publicly, 'I will go back' and I will go back, because I'm a Russian politician,

and I belong to this country."

In January 2021, Navalny returned to Russia and was immediately detained, sparking massive

protests for his release.

On February 2, 2021, not long after his return from Germany, a Russian court sentenced Navalny

to a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence, a continuation of a previous delayed sentence

from 2014.

The trip to Germany was held to be in violation of his probation.

"Navalny drew the outline of a heart to his wife Yulia."

His lawyers said that Navalny took the news "bravely," and he gave every impression of

wanting to fight on for the next few years.

He kept up commentary on Russian politics through social media and staged a weeks-long

hunger strike soon after being incarcerated.

Unlike the action against Georgia in 2008, Navalny opposed the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

He even cracked jokes when appearing in court via video stream.

But as he continued to speak out, the Russian state continued to target him.

He received additional sentences, one for nine years and another for 19, which he accepted

as "a life sentence."

Groups allied with him faced political opposition and a shut-out from any levers of power.

Navalny's lawyers lost contact with him at the end of 2023.

He was eventually traced to an Arctic penal colony, where he claimed he was subjected

to pro-Putin music.

But he was still outspoken and appeared healthy, making his death at 47 appear even more suspicious.

"If they decide to kill me, it means we are incredibly strong."