Russians in exile: The immortal Navalny will bury Putin

Prominent Kremlin critics and ordinary Russians in exile have accused President Vladimir Putin of "murdering" opposition leader Alexei Navalny, saying his death would make him "immortal" and possibly a greater threat to the Russian leader in the afterlife than in life.
Supporters of the man who was considered Russia's most prominent political prisoner were devastated. They laid flowers in front of Moscow's embassies in foreign capitals and held rallies. "Navalni is eternal," read a poster outside the building of the Russian diplomatic mission in Copenhagen.
"Russia kills," Russians wrote on a poster erected by an activist in Paris.
Russian authorities announced today that 47-year-old Navalny died suddenly in an Arctic prison. The shock announcement came as Putin prepares to extend his decades-long rule in presidential elections in March.
"We must unite"
Prominent Russian writer Boris Akunin, who lives in self-imposed exile in Europe, said Navalny was now "immortal".
"The dictator can do nothing more to Navalny, he is dead, but he is immortal. In the end he will bury Putin," 67-year-old Akunin told AFP.
"I also think that the murdered Alexei Navalny will be an even greater threat to the dictator," Akunin said.
Putin may now step up repression to silence remaining dissent and "start a campaign of terror in the country," he added.
Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chhartishvili, stressed that Navalny's death was a "huge personal loss".
In the fall, Navalny replied to Akunin from prison that he believed in God and in science. "I believe that Russia will be happy and free, and I do not believe in death," he noted.
Lev Ponomarev, a human rights activist who lives in Paris, said Navalny's death was a challenge, but Russians must continue to fight for democracy.
"This is a historic event that should unite us all," the 82-year-old said on his way to a commemoration outside the Russian embassy.
"There are still many of us. We must act together," he added.
Navalny's name on the ballots
Former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who spent a decade in a Russian prison, said Putin was responsible for the opposition leader's "untimely" death.
He called on Russians to go to the polls on March 17 and put Navalny's name on the ballots as a sign of opposition to the Kremlin's actions.
"Putin killed Navalny. Trusting a regime that mercilessly liquidates its opponents has its consequences. If you didn't know or doubted how to act that day, here is the answer," the 60-year-old exiled opposition politician wrote in social networks.
Khodorkovsky called on journalist Tucker Carlson and billionaire Elon Musk for comment, hinting at their bias toward the Russian president.
Andrei Kozyrev, Ruia's foreign minister during Boris Yeltsin's administration, called Alexei Navalny's death a "wake-up call."
"The assassination of Navalny, an outstanding leader, and the imprisonment of Vladimir Kara-Murza and other heroes standing up for truth and democracy are essential tools for maintaining Putin's tyranny in Russia, as well as his anti-American and anti-Western foreign policy ", he wrote in X.
"It is so appalling that Trump's defenders, instead of making substantive arguments, are following the model of Putin's propaganda," Kozyrev added.
Navalny, a charismatic jurist, was seen as Russia's biggest opposition leader and the only politician who could muster much support to stand up to 71-year-old Putin.
Navalny coined the phrase "the beautiful Russia of the future" and many took it as a symbol of an alternative Russia that respects human rights and lives in peace with its neighbors.
"What a nightmare!" - exiled opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov said on social networks.
In 2020, Navalny barely survived poisoning with the Novichok nerve agent developed by the USSR. After treatment in Germany, he returned to Russia in 2021 and was immediately arrested and subsequently imprisoned.
His return marked a new wave of repression in Russia, and the last vestiges of dissent were crushed when Putin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. All prominent anti-Kremlin critics are either in prison or in exile. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have left their country since Putin invaded Ukraine. /BGNES