"Young Yeltsin"
“What is the need to have four dachas? To build them in four years of perestroika? This is where the moral principle is. The person who leads the state must be morally pure! And he has excesses, luxury! Moreover, it was not built with your own money, not earned, but with the money of the people. This is immoral!”
No, this is not a summary of Alexei Navalny’s film about “Putin’s palace” (which turned out to be the apart-hotel of businessman Rotenberg). This is a fragment of a debate between Boris Yeltsin and philosopher Alexander Zinoviev in 1990, when the future President of Russia was, in modern parlance, a rising star of the Soviet opposition. He rushed to power with slogans that were familiar to the hiccups - the fight against privileges, denouncing the party in power, threats to take people out into the streets... It is no coincidence that today Navalny, who does not hide his ambitions for the highest post, is compared to “young Yeltsin.”
Is this comparison correct? Still, Yeltsin has an impressive career behind him: both the head of the most important Sverdlovsk region for the country, and the first secretary of the Moscow city party committee, that is, currently the mayor of the capital... And what does Navalny have behind him?
So let's take a look.
"Ukrainian by Root"
In principle, under a certain set of circumstances, Alexey Navalny could well become the face of... the Ukrainian opposition. The blogger himself in 2013, in an interview with the Kyiv TV channel Inter, said that he was “probably more Ukrainian in some way due to his roots and genetics.” His father Anatoly Navalny was born in the Chernobyl region and graduated from the Kiev Military School of Communications. But after graduation, he was assigned to the Moscow region, where he met his future wife, a laboratory assistant at the Zelenograd Research Institute of Microdevices.
Judging by the rare interviews given by the oppositionist’s parents, his father changed four garrisons, his mother Lyudmila Ivanovna worked either as an economist at a woodworking factory or as an accountant in her husband’s military unit... These skills came in handy later, when after her husband’s dismissal from the army with the rank of lieutenant colonel, the couple decided to open own business - the Kobyakovsky wicker weaving factory.
In 2012, the factory appeared in the Yves Rocher criminal case (more on that below). The investigation suspected that stolen money was transferred through her. However... the enterprise is still operating. Initially, it was owned equally by the Navalny spouses and their two sons, Alexey and Oleg (but Alexey later abandoned his share). The oppositionist’s parents are also credited with two grocery stores in the village of Kobyakovo.
Alexei Navalny's younger brother Oleg graduated from the Financial Academy under the Government of Russia and worked at Russian Post.
Photo: Evgenia GUSEVA
Stanford student's father
Alexei Navalny’s younger brother Oleg graduated from the Financial Academy under the Government of Russia, worked at Russian Post, and held the position of 1st Deputy General Director of EMS Russian Post. He was convicted in the Yves Rocher case.
The oppositionist's wife Yulia Navalnaya (nee Abrosimova) is a native Muscovite. She graduated from the Faculty of International Economic Relations of Plekhanovka, but nothing is known about her career path. She met her future husband on vacation in Turkey and gave birth to two children, Zakhara and Daria. The daughter entered the American Stanford, claiming that she did not pay for tuition. Although this fact is questioned by skeptics who believe that someone did pay for it, since according to the rules of the university, “foreign students are not able to receive financial assistance directly from the university - this is done by third-party organizations.”
Yulia’s mother worked at the Ministry of Light Industry. Father is a research fellow at a research institute. He died in 1996.
“Classmates” of Yushchenko and Saakashvili
Judging by the official biography, Alexei Navalny graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia in 1998. However, not a single journalist was able to find a single classmate who remembered him. Moreover, attempts by journalists to request relevant documents from the university itself were also unsuccessful. There were rumors that he transferred to a correspondence course and was even expelled from the first year - this was stated by Lina Kandakzhi, a radio journalism teacher at RUDN University: “Navalny did not graduate from this university, he was expelled from the first year, he’s a liar.” In 2001, he mastered the specialty “securities and stock exchange business” in absentia at a paid department at the Financial Academy under the Government of the Russian Federation.
And in 2010, he took a 6-month Yale World Fellows course at Yale in America. The program is billed as preparing a “network of new world leaders” that recruits 15 “gifted people from around the world” each year. These same courses, for example, were taken by such “revolutionary prodigies” with anti-Russian overtones as Viktor Yushchenko and Mikheil Saakashvili. Navalny owes his “advanced training” at Yale to prominent figures of the Russian opposition Garry Kasparov and Evgenia Albats, who recommended him as a very promising politician.
In 2021, Russian pranksters called the deputy director of the Yale program, Timothy Stump, and it turned out that he was very proud that Navalny, after their courses, became a “prominent revolutionary.”
Julia met her future husband on vacation in Turkey and gave birth to two children, Zakhara and Daria.
Photo: Vadim SHERSTENIKIN
Both the hairdresser and the player...
While still a student, Navalny tried to become a businessman by registering a hairdresser. Things didn't work out.
He was involved in purchasing advertising for the SPS party.
Traded securities.
Worked in the field of logistics and road transport.
Played on the stock exchange (very unsuccessfully).
As a rule, all the companies that were created with his participation went bankrupt, went bankrupt and were liquidated.
Even his own law firm, Navalny and Partners, did not last more than a year.
By the way, there have always been questions about the status of a lawyer obtained in the Kirov region. The oppositionist reacts extremely nervously and vaguely to the question of where he received his legal practice. However, after the Kirovles case (more on that separately - later), he was deprived of this status.
And from June 2012 to February 2013, Alexei Navalny, on the recommendation of businessman Alexander Lebedev, who owned 15% of Aeroflot shares, was on the board of directors of the airline!
Today, Navalny, according to him, earns money as an individual entrepreneur, supporting the cases of Russians in the European Court of Human Rights. According to the declaration he published last year, he receives about 450 thousand rubles a month. Which doesn't really fit with his expenses. Judging by press publications, he pays 200 thousand rubles a month just for a rented four-room apartment in the Lira residential complex on Avtozavodskaya Street. He also loves to vacation abroad with his family - on average 10 trips a year (if you don’t take the last coronavirus one).
At the same time, Navalny does not hide the fact that his activities are sponsored by a businessman living in the United States, the president of the investment company VMT, Boris Zimin. It was his foundation that paid for Navalny’s transportation on a medical plane from Omsk to Berlin.
Business success
In his youth, Navalny became a co-owner of the Kobyakovskaya wicker weaving factory, which was founded by his parents. He later sold his share in the business and got a job at Aeroflot Bank.
As a student, I independently opened several and Alekt LLC. In the latter, he served as director of legal affairs. During the elections to the State Duma, this company was engaged in advertising. In total, services worth 99 million rubles were provided, 5% of which Navalny received as a commission.
In the late 90s, Alexey was involved in currency control in Shalva Chigirinsky’s development company ST-group, and then became one of the owners, where he held the position of chief accountant. The company specialized in securities trading and after some time went bankrupt.
In 2001, Alexey decided to open a new enterprise, Euro-Asian Transport Systems LLC, in the field of logistics, which was engaged in road freight transportation. A few years later, he was invited to the radio station “Echo of Moscow” as the host of the “Urban Planning Chronicles” program.
In 2009, Navalny decided to change his field of activity and successfully passed the qualification exam to take a position in the bar association in the Kirov region. A year later he successfully transferred to the capital and continued his legal practice in arbitration courts.
In 2011, he began providing legal services to former Yukos lawyer Pavel Ivlev and received a monthly fee of $10,000.
At the beginning of 2012, Aeroflot shareholders elected him one of the members of the board of directors. After the vote, he became a member of the Personnel and Remuneration Committee of the Aeroflot Board of Directors. However, a year later, when a new board of directors was formed, he was not nominated as a candidate.
In 2013, after the verdict in the Kirovles case, where Navalny was a defendant, the Moscow Bar Chamber decided to deprive him of the right to practice as a lawyer.
From Yabloko to nationalist and liberal
To say that Alexey Navalny is rather flighty in his political preferences is to be very modest. A hurricane of exorbitant ambition carried him from one pole to another, from one extreme to another. Yesterday's ultra-liberal suddenly became a full-blown nationalist, and then again defected to the “democrats” camp, not shying away from the help of United Russia.
Holding leadership positions in the liberal Yabloko in the 2000s (he was in the party from 2000 to 2007), the blogger managed to annually take part in the “Russian Marches” of nationalists and was not shy about nationalist rhetoric in his speeches. At the same time, it was Navalny who wrote a statement against the famous nationalist Maxim Martsinkevich (Tesak), who demanded to speak at a debate at the liberal club. Navalny moderated them and, for Tesak’s boorish remarks at his noble meeting, actually sent him to jail.
Yesterday's ultra-liberal suddenly became a full-blown nationalist, and then again defected to the “democrats” camp, not shying away from the help of United Russia.
Photo: Anatoly ZHDANOV
Expelled from Yabloko “for causing political damage to the party,” Navalny created the national democratic movement “People” in 2007, then entered into a coalition with other nationalists, including the then scandalous Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) led by Alexandra Belova (Potkina).
His views did not prevent Navalny from May to September 2009 from getting a job as a freelance adviser to the governor of the Kirov region, a functionary of the Union of Right Forces Nikita Belykh (just as these views did not prevent the governor himself). And after a trip to Yale, the oppositionist moves away from nationalist speeches (although he supports actions with the slogans “Stop feeding the Caucasus”) and focuses on criticizing the authorities.
After the victory of United Russia in the State Duma elections in 2011, our “hero”, perhaps for the first time, declares himself as the leader of the entire opposition, to which she actually did not delegate any rights to him. But apparently the skills from Yale University were put to use. And Navalny plunged headlong into the protests that spilled onto the streets in 2011-2012. All this movement ended in May 2012 on Bolotnaya Square, when after the riots dozens of criminal cases were opened. All this time Alexey got off with administrative arrests.
In 2013, he raised the bar of his ambitions by declaring that he plans to become President of Russia. And I decided to practice for the election of the mayor of the capital. Calling United Russia a party of “swindlers and thieves,” he simultaneously accepts help from it - signatures of deputies for registration as a candidate. And the elections... loses, receiving 27.24% of the vote. Sobyanin then scored 51.37%.
In 2021, actively collecting money for his “election as president,” Navalny organized a parade throughout the country. Although I obviously could not participate in the elections due to a criminal record.
Now, after Alexey’s imprisonment, many assume that his wife Yulia will continue the business. Photo: navalny/Instagram
Social and political activities
Today, the Anti-Corruption Foundation of Alexei Navalny is the largest public organization in Russia. The guy is supported by millions of supporters across the country. And the greatest resonance among Lyosha’s fans was caused by the documentary “The Seagull,” in which Navalny told all the ins and outs of the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation, Yuri Chaika.
In 2021, Alexei Navalny conducted an investigation into the corruption schemes of the current Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, Dmitry Medvedev. The publication of such information caused a wave of indignation among citizens. Subsequently, people began to organize mass rallies near the State Duma, demanding explanations from Medvedev.
Labor and business
At the beginning of his working career, Alexey Navalny held the position of lawyer in the small bank Aeroflot . The politician worked there until 1997 . Afterwards, he seriously started his own business, organizing his first Nesna LLC. The company provided hairdressing services. But where Alexei Navalny lived at that time, this turned out to be not a profitable idea.
Unique news Andrey Rozhkov (Ural dumplings): biography, Wikipedia, the best
Alexei Navalny also tried his hand at selling securities . He, together with his former classmates, organized an online exchange. But as in the first case, Lyosha did not achieve success, after which he began to try his hand at politics for the first time. In the end, he realized that this was his purpose.
Anti-corruption activities
FKB Alexei Navalny has very wide popularity throughout the Russian Federation. His anti-corruption activities cause a lot of problems at the top of political society. Mass rallies and protests, construction bans and the destruction of shadow income - all this is the merit of the young politician, and part-time blogger.
The guy published his documentaries about corruption and investigations on his personal YouTube channel. Such interesting content provoked a serious increase in supporters of Alexei Navalny throughout the country.
But anti-corruption activities also have negative sides for Alexey. During the entire investigation, he was repeatedly brought to trial for illegally organizing rallies. And once a criminal case was even opened against him, which was quickly closed due to the lack of corpus delicti.
Navalny in the Moscow mayoral elections
Due to his active work, Alexey Navalny received enormous support in the elections for the mayor of Moscow. About 10 districts of the capital voted for the young and promising politician. Namely: Troparevo-Nikulino, Arbat, Yakimanka, Tverskoy, Sokol, Gagarinsky, Khamovniki and Zamoskvorechye.
Important ! Despite the positive attitude of the residents of Avtozavodskaya, where Alexei Navalny has been staying since 2021 until now, this area did not show support in the elections.
Navalny never won the capital elections. But the current situation gave the politician plenty of experience. Now Sergei Sobyanin has taken Navalny’s place. In the last elections, he received support from the same people who voted for Alexei.
Unique news from Marie Senn - how old she is, biography, who she’s dating, clothes
Undercover agent?
All this time, Navalny heads the Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organization recognized as a “foreign agent.” FBK publishes its investigations about officials and businessmen on the Internet, after which Navalny’s Bitcoin wallet is immediately replenished. Which allows the oppositionist’s opponents to claim: all these investigations are ordered! And the “evidence” was half planted by the customer, half invented.
And the investigation into the “poisoning” of Navalny himself, published in several media outlets at the same time, was linked to Western intelligence services.
There is a popular version that Navalny is a sent agent whose goal is to shake up the political situation in Russia. However, there is an opinion that he also has influential patrons inside Russia. Otherwise, it is difficult to explain the preferences that he received, even while on probation.
More on this in the next chapter.
Alexei Navalny: biography
Alexey Navalny is a well-known Russian public and political figure leading a public fight against corruption. He is considered a symbol of the Russian non-systemic opposition. He is the author of the highest-rated political blog on LiveJournal and the head of the RosPil project, aimed at combating abuses in public procurement. The biography of Alexei Navalny is full of scandals and criminal cases in which he was the main defendant in major thefts and fraud. The attitude of the population towards the activist and oppositionist Navalny is ambiguous - some consider him a brilliant fighter for truth and justice, others, on the contrary, see him as an ordinary populist who, with his expressed attitude against government agencies and political parties, is trying to deceive the people.
"Kirovles"
In 2009, he and his comrades created the Vyatskaya Forestry Company and, using their status as an adviser to the local governor Nikita Belykh, forced the management of the Kirovles state enterprise to sell their products to VLK. And at obviously reduced prices. After which the timber was resold at market prices. Navalny’s company, in fact, was a scam company, which became the reason for bringing charges under the article “organizing the embezzlement of someone else’s property.” Damage was estimated at 1.3 million.
Navalny plunged headlong into the protests that spilled onto the streets in 2011-2012
Photo: Anatoly ZHDANOV
What added piquancy to the situation was that the trial ran parallel to the election campaign, where Navalny was aiming to become mayor of Moscow. As a result, 2 months before the elections, the court renders a verdict: 5 years in a general regime colony and a fine of half a million rubles. The “timber baron” was taken into custody and taken to a pre-trial detention center. The liberal crowd raises a scandal - the opposition candidate was put behind bars! After all, the verdict has not yet entered into force, and there are chances (if you are not a mere mortal, of course).
And then miracles begin that no criminal in Russia has ever dreamed of. The prosecutor's office suddenly says that it did not insist on Navalny's imprisonment at all. And he will even appeal this decision. And the next day the “organizer of embezzlement” is released on his own recognizance. And they give you the opportunity to participate in elections. And then the Kirov Regional Court changed its mind, replacing the real sentence with a suspended one.
The European Court of Human Rights later ruled that Navalny's trial was not politically motivated, but that his rights were violated and Russian law allows for a review of the case.
No sooner said than done. In 2021, the Kirov court re-sentenced Navalny to 5 years probation.
Alexey Navalny now
In March 2021, unauthorized rallies took place in many regions of the Russian Federation. Thousands of citizens who gathered in the squares of the country's major cities demanded an investigation into corruption in the highest echelons of power.
Alexei Navalny at a rally
The reason for mass protests was a film by the Navalny Foundation about the property of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev. Many Russians were clearly shocked by the information provided by the investigation, which revealed that one of the country's top officials is the owner of a “secret empire” that was created through complex corruption schemes. According to Navalny, Medvedev allegedly manages huge funds and assets, and the official’s inner circle controls the flow of funds into the accounts of organizations. It is assumed that tens of billions of rubles were consistently transferred to the accounts of such structures. Such incriminating evidence excited the Russian public.
Detention of Alexei Navalny at an anti-corruption rally on Tverskaya Street
Some deputies also supported the citizens' indignation. In particular, representatives of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation demanded the creation of an investigative commission that could conduct a transparent investigation and also check all materials.
Navalny himself was arrested
for resisting the police.
On March 27, 2021, the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow placed the opposition politician under arrest for 15 days
and also ordered him to pay a fine of 20 thousand rubles.
Alexey Navalny at a meeting of the Tverskoy District Court of Moscow
Previously, Navalny submitted an application to hold the event in the center of the Russian capital, but city authorities refused the politician, offering alternative venues in Sokolniki and Lyublino. Such a proposal did not suit representatives of the opposition forces.
Despite numerous criminal cases, the famous activist still does not give up hopes of competing for the main position in the country. In December 2021, Alexey Anatolyevich announced that he intends to participate in the 2021 presidential campaign.
Alexey Anatolyevich intends to participate in the 2018 presidential campaign
It is still difficult to predict whether a politician will be able to participate in the elections, because according to the law, an oppositionist will receive the right to participate in the electoral process only after expunging his criminal record. The social activist is not particularly worried about the issue, having opened online voter registration on his official website. Thus, the politician decided to participate in the elections as a self-nominated candidate and confirm his intentions with the signatures of Russian voters.
In January 2021, Navalny already stated that he considers corruption the main enemy for Russia. In his opinion, it is the violation of the law in this direction that does not allow the country as a whole to develop. He stated this on the Dozhd TV channel during a debate with Russian designer and blogger Artemy Lebedev.
Navalny commented on his desire to participate in the elections with the desire of people who, he believes, are already massively supporting his anti-corruption program. According to the opposition figure, he is obliged to participate in the elections because he carries political representation for these people.
Navalny’s political career was not without incidents. On March 19, 2021, at one of the protests, which was organized against an increase in tariffs for housing and communal services, a politician was pelted with eggs in Novosibirsk. Still, this did not stop the oppositionist from meeting people and listening to their problems.
"Yves Rocher"
Approximately the same scheme was in another criminal trial, which ran parallel to Kirovles. Only here there are already articles “fraud” and “laundering”. Everything is according to the “classics” - a shipping company is created through a Cypriot offshore (again?), through which the cosmetic company is offered to transport goods across Russia. Why not by mail, you ask? And here Navalny’s brother Oleg comes onto the scene, who, we recall, worked as the head of the internal mail department of the FSUE Russian Post branch. According to investigators, it was he who convinced the management of Yves Rocher to use the services of a transport company, which in fact was a dummy. She had no transport! The transportation was handled by the company of a Navalny friend.
As a result, the customer transferred 55 million rubles, of which only 31 million reached the carrier. And 19 million, as the prosecution alleged, were legalized by the Navalny brothers through fictitious lease agreements with fly-by-night companies for premises at their parent wicker factory. The rest was simply spent on ourselves.
Violation of probation
In 2014, the court sentenced Oleg to 3.5 years of general regime, and Alexey to the same term, but... again on probation. Plus 5 years probation. In 2021, for violations of the probationary period, it was extended to the end
2020 If you break it, you will sit down. Actually, that’s what happened on January 17, 2021. Under the terms of this probationary period, Navalny was required to regularly report to the Federal Penitentiary Service. However, he systematically neglected this - in 2020 (even before the poisoning!) he failed to show up for registration 6 times. It is not very clear what prevented the FSIN from imprisoning such a “recidivist” before his whole story with Novichok and treatment in Berlin. Nevertheless, she had a legal basis for this both then and now.
Here are more facts for supporters of the version about the oppositionist’s influential patrons. In 2021, after Navalny was doused with brilliant green, damaging his eye, within 24 hours he received a foreign passport and permission to travel to Europe for examination.
Poisoning politician
The poisoning incident occurred on August 20, 2021, when Alexei Navalny was heading from Tomsk to Moscow. On the plane, he felt unwell and the aircraft made an emergency landing at the Omsk airport. The politician was already unconscious at that time. He was rushed to a local hospital and placed on a ventilator.
Alexey was later flown to the German Charité clinic on a charter plane. In Berlin, doctors found traces of a toxic substance belonging to the Novichok group. The incident caused an international outcry and the heads of European states called on Russia to conduct a transparent investigation and find those responsible for the poisoning of the politician.
Alexey came to his senses on September 7, when doctors brought him out of a medical coma. A week later he began to get up and was on the mend. He was discharged from Charité on September 22, 2021 and recommended to undergo a rehabilitation course.
