OPINION: With Navalny’s reported death in Putin’s Russia, my last hope has disappeared

Editor’s note: Sasha Vasilyuk is a journalist and the author of your debut novel Your Presence is an Obligation, which depicts the 70 years leading up to the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. She grew up between Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. The views expressed in this commentary are the author’s own.read more opinion On CNN.

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The announcement from a Russian prison that Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, has died at the age of 47 sent ripples around the world, and even reached me in California when I woke up Friday morning. I grew up between Ukraine and Russia and returned to both countries every year to visit my family. When I heard that Mr. Navalny had passed away, I immediately thought back to when I met him during a trip to Moscow in 2012. I was 29 years old at the time, and the largest anti-Putin protests were rocking Russia.

A journalist friend took me to a party hosted by a popular liberal radio station, and I immediately made a beeline for the tall, pale man in the center of the room. By then I had heard his name, but when his friends rushed to say hi, I realized how important he was. Mr. Navalny seemed a little awkward when I shook his hand, but there was a palpable energy around him. He had not yet fully established himself as the undisputed leader of the opposition, and in retrospect, he himself had not yet decided how far he was willing to go for his cause. I wonder if it is. I also wonder if he felt that one day he would become a global symbol of courage.

His death is not surprising, but it is shocking. Although I thought it was unrealistic to expect his release, let alone his release as a political leader in today’s Russia, his protest was still important. . Here was a man who could have stayed in Europe but chose to return to Russia and be arrested after surviving a poisoning in 2020. I couldn’t imagine doing something like that, but it was important to me to know that there were people who did it.

With his death in mind, I drove my daughter to day care on Friday. She avoided listening to the radio or calling relatives in Eastern Europe so as not to disturb her daughter with her tears. But when she dropped her off, she met her mother, who grew up Russian in Latvia. She asked me if I had heard about Mr. Navalny’s death, and she replied that her heart was broken and she had been crying all morning.

That’s the nature of this news. Even for those of us who watched Russia slide into authoritarianism from afar, Mr. Navalny remained an important sign that all was not lost. After getting off the train, I called his brother. His brother left Russia last year because he felt it was too dangerous for him and his family to remain here after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He has participated in several protests led by Navalny over the years. In his words: “It was highly unlikely that President Putin would die, political prisoners would be freed, and there was an opportunity to lead Russia in a healthier political direction, but Mr. Navalny was the key figure who could have done so.” “It was just that.” Now that core is gone. ”

My sister-in-law attended a protest in front of the Russian embassy in Warsaw on Friday, where people chanted “Navalny is a hero!” Putin is a coward! He said the protesters spoke of hope, of Navalny saying he would not give up, of a future where Russia would be free. However, as she listened to them, she felt “maybe they are crazy or didn’t get the memo.” What we see now in Russia is that nothing changes, that his death does not affect anyone, that there is only apathy, conformism and complete darkness. ”

When I called my aunt in Ukraine to ask her reaction, she was less emotional. Having lived through intense conflict since 2014, when Russia launched an invasion of Donbas and incited war, she has long given up her hopes for her neighboring country. “This is another proof of Russia’s moral decadence,” she said. “It’s very sad that in five years no one will remember Mr. Navalny.”

I wanted to oppose it, but she was very upset when journalists were killed, when political leaders were assassinated, when Russia illegally occupied Crimea and eventually launched an all-out war against Ukraine. , reminded me of many previous cases. Each time, she thought that this event would cause the Russians to rise up and change the regime. But they never were.

I myself never expected that Russians would finally take to the streets. But Navalny’s death means that all hope for Russia’s recovery is extinct. When I met him in 2012, some Russians believed in their country’s potential for an alternative to the dictatorship offered by President Putin. That feeling disappeared for a while. Yet across the country on Friday, brave people laid flowers despite fear of arrest. This speaks to Navalny’s power to inspire small acts of courage, even if they don’t bring about real change in the face of overwhelming fear.

A childhood friend of mine who lives in Moscow, who uses the pseudonym Sasha Alexeyeva to avoid arrest, said on Friday that her social media is full of posts about Navalny. But as she rode the Moscow subway home from work, she looked around at the other passengers and wondered whether their sad, grim faces were to blame for Mr. Navalny or for Russian life in general. ,did not understand.

“I correspond with other political prisoners,” she said. “They all have a little bit of Navalny about them. I’m very scared of all of them right now.”