Russia became an independent country after the dissipation of the Soviet Union on 25th December 1991 and officially it was recognized as a country.
Putin’s Story
Putin was born on 7th October 1952 in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Putin is currently the President of Russia. He has been serving as a president since 2012. His political career began on 7 May 2000 when he served as a Financial Minister.
Navalny is one of Putin’s strongest critics.
He was criticized for mishandling the Kursk submarine disaster. In short, the Kursk submarine was nuclear-powered and it sank in an accident on 12th August 2000 in the Barents sea. In this accident, around one hundred and eight personnel on board were killed.
On December 31st, 1999, Yeltsin unpredictably announced his resignation and allegedly named Putin acting President. Putin won the March elections with 53% of the vote. As a president, he promised to end corruption, create opportunities, and strongly regulate the market economy.
He did several changes like removing the right of the regional governor to sit in the Federation Council which is the upper house of the Russian Parliament. He also reduced the power of Russia’s unrecognized financiers and media tycoons. There were some terrorist attacks in Moscow and guerilla attacks on Russian troops. In response, Putin declared a military campaign.
Putin strongly opposed US President George W. Bush’s decision in 2001 to abandon the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
If we see from the perspective of the economy there was a recession in the 1990s. Due to this, Putin was easily reelected in March 2004 and won with a majority of seats. There were discussions and in 2008 he was forced to step down and he chose Dmitry Medvedev as his successor.
As Dimitry Medvedev won presidential elections.Putin was nominated as prime minister. There were many irregularities in the presidential elections in December 2011 which triggered protests, in which Putin faced strong opposition.
However, in March 2012 he was re-elected as Russia’s President and he nominated Dimitry to serve as prime minister.
Opposition leaders were jailed and were titled foreign agents. In December 2013, by ordering the release of some 25000 individuals from Russian prisons. In 2018, he won the presidential elections again.
Who Is Alexei Navalny?
Alexei Navalny was born on June 4 1976. His father was born in Ukraine and he spent most of his childhood in Chernobyl. After gaining and completing his studies in law and finance from Russian universities, he entered politics in 1999. He started his political career by joining the liberal opposition party Yabloko.
He was expelled from the party in 2007 due to some disagreements. He started his party and tried to win elections but it was not successful.
In 2012, he cast allegations that Putin won the elections through fraud. He did protests in Moscow and ultimately was jailed for 15 days. In 2017 he got arrested for 27 days and in 2019 he got arrested for 30 days.
From 2010 to 2020, he conducted rallies against the Putin government and consistently tried to beat Putin in the elections, but failed every time. He is also a YouTuber. Also, the Russian government tried to kill him by poisoning. He was poisoned thrice. But the third time he got severely ill.
On 20 August 2020, he was poisoned with a Novichok. During a flight from Tomsk to Moscow, there was an emergency landing in Germany and he went into a coma.
He came back to Moscow on 17th January and was arrested by the Russian police at the airport.
Shortly, after his arrest, he released a video on youtube in which he called and urged for nationwide protests. The video has been watched by more than millions of viewers and it exposed Putin’s luxury secret palace.
Protests are going on in Russia to release Navalny, and his appeal was rejected by the judge on 20th February 2021. He would be jailed for three years.
European Union foreign ministers will look for the option of imposing sanctions on Russia for imprisoning opposition prominent leaders.
Conclusion
As per my opinion, Putin will have to ultimately release Navalny as protests are going on in Russia. Putin is a dictator and in Russia, democracy is just for namesake as it’s not people’s government. If we see another aspect, Navalny returned to Moscow to prove to people that he is not frightened by Putin, he knew that eventually he would be arrested. His main motive was to assure people that they could be free from this dictator.
Navalny has a threat to life and no one knows when he would be poisoned next. I just hope that one day, due to the efforts of Navalny, Russia will be free from Putin and it will lead and form people’s government.