In August 2020, Russian politician Alexei Navalny was campaigning in Siberia when he suddenly fell ill. He passed out, was rushed to a hospital and evacuated to Berlin, Germany, where doctors concluded that he had been poisoned by a lethal nervous agent called Novichok.
It was not entirely unexpected. In recent years, several Russian dissidents and deserters have been poisoned. And Navalny is the most vocal critic of the country’s president, Vladimir Putin. In less than 10 years, Navalny has ceased to be a blog about corruption and has become the face of Russia’s opposition movement. When he was poisoned, he was organizing a campaign that threatened Putin’s party in elections across the country.
Watch the video above to find out how Alexei Navalny built a movement unlike any other in recent Russian history and how he became Putin’s greatest threat.
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