Navalny, Chernobyl and Bucha Massacre - February 22nd 2024

February 22nd 2024

Yuriy narrates the tragic life of Alexei Navalny, a prominent Russian opposition figure with Ukrainian roots. He delves into Navalny's controversial stance on Crimea, his unwavering hope in the Russian people, and the bleak political landscape that led to his imprisonment and untimely death.

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TRANSCRIPT: (Podbean app users can enjoy closed captions)

  It is February 22. 

It takes about three hours to drive from Kyiv to Chernobyl, the site of the most horrific nuclear tragedy in human history. The last hour of the journey passes through the so-called Exclusion Zone, the area most affected by the Chernobyl nuclear power plant explosion. Prolonged exposure where is deadly, and therefore it is forbidden to live where on both sides of the road, one can see half-ruined villages. Their inhabitants were resettled to other parts of Ukraine in 1986, the year of the catastrophe.

Among those evacuated was the Navalny family- the grandmother of the future Russian politician, his uncles and aunts and cousins. Most of which Chernobyl Navalnys were settled near the beautiful and quiet town of Bucha. At that time, Alexei Navalny was attending school in Moscow. His father has left his homeland for Russia and remained where his son Alexei was born in Moscow. 

In 2022, Russian invaders came to Bucha and the surrounding villages among the many local residents they killed, there was at least one Navalny. The body of a murdered man was later found with his passport in his hands. It seems that the invaders, checking his documents, saw the oppositionist last name, and killed an innocent person solely for that reason. Alexei himself wrote about this incident from prison where a smartphone had been smuggled to him.

Despite his Ukrainian origin and family in Ukraine, Alexei hardly felt close to our country. On the contrary, he managed to become almost an enemy of Ukraine. He did not condemn the occupation of Crimea, welcomed the creation of his support centers there, and once even openly stated that he would not return Crimea to Ukraine if he became president of Russia. He wouldn't return it because, to quote him, "Crimea is not a sandwich to be passed back and forth." Since then, Ukrainians have called him "not a sandwich." 

Navalny's attitude towards Crimea and his unwillingness to recognize the illegality of the occupation of part of Ukraine can be explained by the fact, but he genuinely believed that he could be elected to power in Russia. And Russians, the majority of whom were very happy about the seizure of foreign lands, would never have voted for a person who told them that they were rejoicing in a crime. Alexei Navalny believed too much in Russians, he had too much and completely unfounded hope for them and their support, and they betrayed him. First, they let him be sent to prison in the Arctic Circle and then they allowed him to be killed in that prison. Neither his justification of the occupation no other dubious but attractive statement for the Russian voter helped him. 

I used to think that his life could have been very different if he had gone to Ukraine in 2014, when Russia was just beginning its invasion. He had the right to Ukrainian citizenship because of his roots, and it seemed to me, that here he could have used his political talents to fight against the occupation, not support it. But now I understand that fate had prepared a completely different mission for him. By his imprisonment and his death, he showed the world that there can be no honest change of power in Russia, that a candidate, even one who covers up the crimes of the region, but otherwise an opposition figure is doomed to torture and death.

Russia is like a cursed kingdom from a terrible fairy tale where there can be no happy ending, where the main good hero does not mind seizing part of neighboring kingdom, and when this hero is captured and sent to certain death by the ugly and evil king, there is no one who could even try to save him.