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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   4231 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for July 7, 2024

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In light of a Russian court ordering the arrest of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, why did Navalny return to Russia from Germany in January 2021 after spending five months recovering from an assassination attempt? Has his death had any effect on Russian politics?

EDIT: grammar

Generally it's considered a brave/heroic act that was miscalculated. He bet on regime being close to collapse/reform(in which case he would much rather be prisoner in Russia than influencer in Germany) and lost. Effect was mostly negative for his supporters, the widespread demoralization and despair. He was a great man to whom no replacement has been found still.

My outsiders perspective is that he did it to keep an opposition spirit 'alive', even though he knew his personal efforts wouldn't likely be fruitful. I don't know if he expected death, but maybe was influenced by the experiences of late soviet dissidents and Warsaw pact detractors who were often imprisoned and harassed by authorities but lived to form the foundations of some post-communists governments.

No, it hasn't moved the needle. I think now that the Russian liberals are finally out of the state of shock from what happened, the majority position is that nobody has any idea why he did that. His reasoning was that he is a Russian politician, which means he can't be abroad. In hindsight, this was dumb because he already almost got killed once and nobody understands why risk it again on the enemy turf outside of some dubious martyr value.

It came out that there were negotiations to swap him for some Russian prisoners in Ukraine, but the details are really foggy. I guess this means that he regretted it after all?

As for non-liberals, i.e. everybody else, nobody gave a crap and still doesn't.

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