Daniel Roher's film about Russian dissident Alexei Navalny offers intimate, sometimes amazing access to the bravery — and human cost — of opposing a despot.
Oksana Baulina reported on government corruption for The Insider, based in Latvia. She formerly worked for the non-profit of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and was "amazingly brave," a colleague said.
Navalny, who is already serving a 2.5-year sentence for parole violations, was sentenced to an additional nine years in a high-security prison. He has vowed to keep fighting.
Navalny and eight of his allies — including top aides Lyubov Sobol and Georgy Alburov — were on Tuesday added to the registry by Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service.
The Kremlin critic looked gaunt after a weeks-long prison hunger strike. He appeared as the head of his political network said it was being forced to shut down amid government pressure.
The jailed opposition leader's political network has been ordered to suspend its activities pending a court ruling on whether to label it and affiliated organizations "extremist."
Demonstrators demanded the release from prison of Kremlin-critic Alexei Navalny, who has been on a hunger strike for three weeks. The marches swept across dozens of cities.
The main Russian opposition figure, who has been on a 20-day hunger strike, has been moved to an infirmary at another prison, where he will undergo "vitamin therapy," authorities say.
After weeks of protests and crackdowns, allies of the opposition figure Alexei Navalny urged Russians to hold up their phones outside for spans of 15 minutes.
Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview "We don't want to isolate ourselves from global life, but we have to be ready for that. If you want peace then prepare for war,"
NPR's Scott Simon remarks on the sentencing this week of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. The Putin critic was poisoned last year, recovered in Germany, then arrested for violating parole.
For the second weekend in a row, people across Russia cried out for the release of the jailed Kremlin critic and opposition leader. And again they were met by a massive show of force.
Russian authorities warned of mass arrests as demonstrators marched in open defiance of the Kremlin and called on President Vladimir Putin to free the jailed opposition leader.
Russian authorities detained the country's top opposition leader after he landed in Moscow on a flight from Berlin. Navalny had been gone nearly five months since he was poisoned last August.
The Russian opposition leader posed as a national security agent during a 45-minute phone call to extract information from a spy who was reportedly involved in Navalny's August poisoning.
During his year-end news conference, the Russian president glibly brushed aside international suspicions that Kremlin agents were behind the attempted assassination of the leading opposition figure.
An investigation by Bellingcat, an Internet research organization, and other media outlets, revealed that for years, Russian agents secretly followed Alexei Navalny.
It is "reasonable to conclude," the EU says, "that the poisoning of Alexei Navalny was only possible with the consent of the Presidential Executive Office."
In an interview, the Russian opposition leader accuses President Vladimir Putin of ordering the attack with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok. A Kremlin spokesperson calls the accusation groundless.
!["I assert that [Vladimir] Putin was behind the crime, and I have no other explanation for what happened," Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny told the German magazine <em>Der Spiegel.</em>](https://knpr.org/sites/default/files/public/styles/thumbnail/public/images/npr-story/919141465_149994421.jpg?itok=-5BGQ1I_ "Navalny Instagram via AP")
