RIP Alexei Navalny

The feeling is not new: darkness, fear, and sadness. But I wouldn’t say there is a sense of shock — the darkness of Russia’s regime is so encompassing that nothing’s shocking anymore.

But it’s sickening. Darkness is overwhelming.

I’m seeing my connections on social media making posts about Navalny. I have mixed feelings about their posts. I share everyone’s profound sadness. But when I see the messages about not giving up and continuing Alexei’s mission, I feel empty. There is little inspiration from the tragedy. There is just darkness. Darkness won over hope over and over again. Heroism for nothing.

There was a wave of protests in Russia against Putin’s regime in 2011–2013. It was then that Navalny came to prominence labelling Putin’s ruling party “a party of crooks and thieves”. The demonstrations were large. There was hope — not so much about the possibility of some change to the regime but about Russia’s society retaining some of its youth and freedom.

But since then — nothing. Only darkness.

To me, the assassination of Boris Nemtsov in 2015 was more shocking. It was also in February. By ironic coincidence, the morning after Nemtsov’s death, I was on my way to the Russian embassy in San Francisco. I had to deal with some legal papers that my relatives needed. As I thought of the images of Nemtsov’s slain body stretched out on the pavement, with Moscow’s Red Square in the background, I suddenly became aware, with crystal, unmistakable clarity, of how I felt, of what I felt. Fear. Darkness.

Nemtsov was one of Russia’s most prominent opposition leaders, but he was the face of the 1990s, and his political influence had waned a long time ago. In a certain way, to me this made the news even more shocking and ominous — the violence of Russia’s regime spares no one, not the current critics and not the ones from the past.

From poisonings, and assassinations to full-out wars, Russia’s regime is continuing to write chapters with the same plot. There are no twists. It’s darkness and violence. The murder weapons are changing from one chapter to another — that’s the only twist. Ice axe, radiation, poison, assassination, bombs.

Navalny’s work and tragic destiny are now the latest chapter in this horror story.