Vladimir Putin’s main opponent dies in prison at 47: the role of Bitcoin in the fight against the regime.
Alexei Navalny, one of the most prominent dissidents who fought against the propaganda of the Russian regime led by Vladimir Putin, was found dead in a Siberian prison on February 16, 2024, at the age of 47.
In 2011, he founded the FBK, “Anti-Corruption Foundation,” becoming a symbol of opposition to the regime. The FBK conducted research, investigations, and published documents exposing the corruption of the Russian government to the world.
For years, Navalny and his foundation represented the most feared opposition movement by Putin.
It is no coincidence that in August 2020, Navalny fell ill while on a commercial flight, ending up in a coma for about a month in a Berlin hospital.
From the initial investigations, it became clear that Navalny had been poisoned with novichok, a powerful nerve agent of Russian production.
Twenty-four hours after the incident, the Russian government seized the real estate properties of Navalny and his wife Yulia Navalnaya and froze their bank accounts. On the same day, the accounts of another 500 activists from the FBK foundation were frozen.
After coming out of a coma and returning to Russia in 2021, Navalny was arrested and sentenced to two years and eight months in prison for fraud. On March 22, 2022, he received a new sentence, this time of nine years in a maximum-security prison for “fraud and contempt of court,” and on August 4, 2023, he was sentenced to another 19 years for “creating an extremist organization.”
The use of Bitcoin in the fight against the regime
Following the introduction of a law on the control of funds from abroad, known as the “foreign agents” law, the FBK association has long been dismantled.
Some members of the FBK have moved abroad, while others have continued to operate in Russia by organizing protests and media campaigns against the government to demand Navalny’s release.
These campaigns have been organized thanks to fundraising in bitcoin. From 2016 to 2022, the association received a total of 733 bitcoin.
In a 2021 interview with Reuters, Leonid Volkov, in charge of Navalny’s media campaigns, stated:
“We use bitcoin because it’s a good legal means of payment. The fact that we have bitcoin payments as an alternative helps to defend us from the Russian authorities. They see if they close down other more traditional channels, we will still have bitcoin. It’s like insurance.”
