I’m not sure if it took you a night to come up with that whitewashing or if you really act in good faith and have simply absorbed our western propaganda about this ‘democratic activist’ and don’t know any better? I will go over the points: “the most significant anti-corruption and anti-Putin opposition figure in Russia” That is the image created here in the west. Mislabeled a citizen activist/ anti- corruption journalist. He was not a journalist, having a Livejournal/Wordpress, etc and posting on it doesn’t make you a journalist. In reality he was a rich businessman making money from the stock market. That of course sounds less sympathetic. while not on oligarch level himself, he certainly worked for them. And like many of that type of people he was corrupt and consequently convicted. And he was certainly not ‘the most significant anti-Putin opposition figure’ The biggest opposition in Russia are the communists followed by the liberals. Navalny was at best locally known in Moscow, his best result was losing the mayoral elections (27% to 50%+) there. Outside of Moscow people barely knew of him, and if they did he was generally disliked. This for his views. “nationalist and anti-immigration politics” you call it. That sounds so innocent compared to my “racist ultranationalist POS”. When you organize fascist marches, call muslims cockroaches and shooting them in videos the second definition is the accurate one. All this is nicely swept under the carpet in our press mouthpieces. What matters is the anti-Putin part and that he could be bought. He was the chosen western puppet. After all we’re not going to support left-wing opposition are we? They cleaned up his image, just as they did with the barbaric headchopper Jolani we supported as a proxy. Cut his terrorist beard, gave hime a suit and even a new name. And just like that he is acceptable and our democratic leaders can shake hands and do business with him. Navalny got the same treatment. Also his second in command was filmed meeting an MI6 agent where they talked about him getting money to organize protests and cause troubles. This is how the western regime change system works. And somehow our neutral and free democratic press never wrote he was all for invading ukraine, and a whole lot more BTW, as these extreme-right great empire types do. Another inconvenient fact. Can’t really blame western people from supporting this awful guy when they only get to know what our regimes want. And anti-Putin must be automatically good in the simplistic view of the public if they don’t look any further. Our governments know exactly what he was, but then again with the US already near fascist and the EU not far behind it’s to be expected.