Patriot by Alexei Navalny review – the man who dared to defy Putin

This remarkable memoir by the bold and fearless Russian opposition leader describes an extraordinary life, from a childhood in the shadow of Chornobyl to surviving a novichok attack and his final days in a remote Arctic penal colony

Alexei Navalny knew how it would end: “I’ll spend the rest of my life in prison and die here.” He was right. On 16 February 2024, the Russian authorities announced the death of its highest profile political prisoner in colony FKU IK-3, north of the Arctic Circle. He was 47 years old.

“All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I’ll never see my grandchildren,” he writes in the chapter that forms the epilogue of Patriot, his posthumously published memoir. “I’ll be missing from all photos.” It’s a deliberate strategy, his “prison zen” to contemplate – and accept – the worst. “Even if everything starts falling apart, they will bump me off at the first sign the regime is collapsing. They will poison me,” Navalny tells his wife, Yulia, when she visits. When she agrees, he’s ecstatic. “That was great! No tears!”

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