Alexei Navalny 4 June 1976 - 16 February 2024
Died while serving a 19 year sentence in a corrective facility in the village of Kharp in the Russian Arctic. Details of death not known and probably never will be.

Image: courtesy of Google free pics; information sources: Wikipedia and internet news and reports.

Stanza 2: Novichok - a deadly military grade nerve agent that nearly killed him in 2020.

Stanza 3: Stalinesque - characteristic of Joseph Stalin (1878 - 1953) -
Communist terrorist dictator of the Soviet Union (1924 -1953), a period of global might to which Putin longs to return.

Stanzas 5: quotes are paraphrased from the following post to his supporters someone sent on his behalf during the latter part of his life in prison:
"You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist."

Stanza 6: quote by poet Richard Lovelace: "To Althea from Prison." He was an English Cavalier poet of the 17th century who fought on behalf of Charles 1 during the English Civil War. The message is that, without our freedom and civil rights, we incarcerate ourselves in our own prison of powerlessness and inhumanity.

Navalny rose to prominence as a blogger, lawyer, Russian opposition leader, political activist. But the beginning of his more meteoric rise was in 2011 when he fought against Putin's campaign to be re-elected once more as President of Russia. In the process of his opposition and commitment to expose corruption, elitism and repression, he has faced every political oppression and put his political movement above his own personal health issues. His unyielding defiance in the face of attempted murder, trumped up charges and unlawful, inhumane sentences has, in turn, contributed to the most important life in opposition politics seen in Russia in the last 30 years and, probably, longer.

In response to his sentencing: "The number doesn't matter. I understand very well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence where life is measured by the duration of my life or the life span of this regime."
Sadly, his sentence finished with the former. But not his mission.

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