Alexei Navalny, the vocal Putin critic who died this week, helped to expose the Russian President’s most luxurious assets to shine a light on the alleged Kremlin’s corruption.
Navalny died at a maximum security Russian prison dubbed “Polar Wolf” after allegedly going for a walk and losing consciousness, it was announced on Friday.
He was jailed following a failed assassination attempt in 2020 after fiercely campaigning against Kremlin corruption. He also led major protests against the state.
This campaigning reportedly helped to expose the vast lavish palaces, and the yachts and private planes used by the Russian president and his oligarchs that were allegedly bought with cash.
In 2021, he exposed Putin’s £1.07 billion Black Sea palace in a YouTube video. It hosts a casino, an Orthodox church and two helipads. The fortress even has its own vineyard and an ice hockey rink.
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The Kremlin critic’s exposé included drone footage of the grounds and has since raked in 120 million hits on YouTube in January 2021.
That is according to Lyubov Sobol, an anti-Kremlin politician who helped produce Navalny’s infamous videos and who spoke to the New York Post.
Navalny said that Russians’ incomes continue to plummet because Putin spends public cash on things like his palace during a heated 113-minute rant.
He also revealed some of the Russian presidents’ crazy superyachts, including the 459-foot long £555 million Scheherazade.
The ex-prisoner said inmates are attacked with batons, choked and pepper-sprayed on a regular basis.
Guards also tie them up, force them into awkward positions, and subjected to “humiliating procedures”, he claimed.
According to colony staff inmates are illegally beaten because “the prisoner must understand from the first minutes where he ended up”.
Ilya Zaslavsky, a corruption expert, told the New York Post: “Only under Putin have the execution-style deaths of rivals and gradual torture of Navalny become standard. Navalny was very brave.
“He understood what happened and he still went back to Russia. He exposed the systemic corruption on an unprecedented scale — not just of Putin but of everyone around him.”
“Navalny tried to mobilize people to fight. He lived by his actions. Not just his words.”
Navalny had received three prison terms and spent months in isolation in Penal Colony No. 6 for alleged minor infractions. He rejected all charges against him, calling them politically motivated.
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