Alexei Navalny, the most important opposition leader in Russia, is unconscious in hospital after drinking poisoned tea on an airplane. This has happened before: Anna Politkovskaya, the crusading Russian journalist, was also poisoned on an airplane. She recovered, but was later murdered outside her apartment. This latest assassination attempt comes just as anti-government demonstrations gain strength in Belarus and the Russian Far East, demonstrations which have built on the example of Navalny, among other things. Over the past decade, Navalny promoted a new ethos and new forms of dissidence in Russia, using the internet to interact with millions of people, inspiring people to find new ways to participate in public life.
I wrote this about him in 2011; since then, Navalny has become far more sophisticated, authoring powerful documentaries which attract millions of viewers. But it does give some idea of where he started:
Alexei Navalny, the de facto leader of the demonstrators who thronged freezing Moscow on Christmas Eve, minces no words.
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