The death of Alexei A. Navalny, the leader of Russia’s main opposition, has shocked Russian dissidents. But it also fuels some hope that in its desperate moment, the opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin will be able to unite as never before.
Doing so will be a challenge, given the often aloof approach of Mr Navalny’s movement and the motley assemblage of other leading Russian opposition figures: almost all exiles and none with his broad national appeal.
Among them was Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a former oligarch who fell out with Mr Putin, spent 10 years in prison and became one of his most prominent opponents in exile in London. Then there is Maxim Katz, a YouTube influencer and former poker champion who is based in Israel. There’s also Ilya Yashin, a longtime liberal politician serving an eight-year sentence for publicizing Russian atrocities in Ukraine.
Beyond these elements that try to speak for all of Russia, there are a multitude of small anti-war groups that focus on specific Russian regions, social issues, or ethnic minorities. Some of their demands – such as an accounting of Russia’s imperial history – have clashed with the more conservative position of Mr Navalny, who has flirted with Russian nationalism to win a wider following.
Many operate their own YouTube channels or use other social media such as Telegram and podcasts to broadcast their messages to millions of viewers in Russia, despite the Kremlin’s tighter control of information.
But above all that will be Mr Navalny, even after his death in a Russian prison on Friday. As of Sunday, Mr. Navalny’s family had still not been able to locate his body, according to his team.
During his decades-long political career, Mr. Navalny has built an unparalleled network of nationwide activists, social media channels and international allies that have made him the face of the opposition to Mr. Putin. A group of capable lieutenants transplanted this network into exile in Vilnius, Lithuania, after Mr. Navalny was imprisoned in 2021.
“All of us in the opposition are at a certain loss about what to do now and how,” Mr. Katz, 39, said. “All opposition life has always revolved around Navalny, so now it’s completely unclear what will happen. “
Some of Mr Navalny’s lieutenants, mostly in their 30s, have become political players in their own right, with a chance to shape the future course of the late leader’s movement. They are Leonid Volkov, a skilled political organizer who had overseen Mr. Navalny’s network abroad, and Kira Yarmysh, Mr. Navalny’s longtime press secretary.
Mr Navalny’s death has also drawn attention to his wife, Yulia Navalny, 47. Her fiery speech to Western leaders in Munich after news of her husband’s death on Friday sparked speculation that she could also have a political future.
Mr Navalny’s team acknowledged on Saturday that their sprawling organization would need to be restructured to adjust to the loss of their leader. But they gave little indication of what political direction they might take, beyond a promise to continue Mr. Navalny’s mission.
“We would need to undergo some changes,” Ms. Yarmysh, the spokeswoman, told an independent Russian news program on YouTube. “We all know that perfectly well.”
Ms Yarmysh said she had no immediate comment for this article. Two other senior aides to Mr. Navalny declined to comment.
Mr. Navalny and, later, his team have long justified their decision to go it alone, saying the time and effort spent managing political alliances would be better spent dealing directly with Mr. Putin.
“I’ll be direct: To hell with your coalitions,” Mr Navalny wrote in response to Mr Katz’s call for an electoral alliance on his website last year. “This is imitation activity. A fake.”
Mr. Katz often sparred with Mr. Navalny’s team on social media. Other dissidents said such disputes reduced the impact of the opposition and kept it divided.
Now, with Mr. Navalny’s death, his allies, as well as the broader Russian dissident movement, are looking for a new strategy with which to oppose Mr. Putin.
From Vilnius, Mr Navalny’s organization runs online news channels, investigative media and activist groups that continue to set the agenda for the wider opposition movement.
Their main tool was YouTube, the last major Western social media platform allowed inside the country and the main source of information for millions of Russians.
Mr Navalny’s main YouTube channel, maintained by his staff, has more than six million subscribers. The organization’s news channel, Popular Politics, which was created after the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine to counter government propaganda, has more than two million. Last year, Popular Politics increased its broadcasts to about 30 hours a week and nearly doubled its staff to 130.
In general, broadcasts from Mr Navalny’s team try to straddle a line between political campaigning and news, a format used by dozens of opposition politicians, civil society leaders and independent media groups trying to remain part of the discussion in Russia from exile.
A YouTube channel run by Mr. Katz has attracted nearly 10 million unique visitors in the past three months, according to YouTube Analytics data. Almost 60 percent of them came from inside Russia.
For his part, Mr Khodorkovsky’s vastly reduced fortune still allows him to sponsor an online news network aimed at different sectors of the Russian public.
Mr. Katz said the success of a social media campaign launched from abroad to help a longtime antiwar candidate, Boris B. Nadezhdin, gather the signatures needed to run in the March presidential election showed that it remains possible to create a political impact in Russia from exile. (The government-controlled electorate later disputed some of those signatures, likely ending Mr. Nadezhdin’s election.)
A report last year by the JX Fund, a research group focused on free speech, estimated that Russian independent media reached 6% to 9% of Russia’s adult population, a sizable number given the pervasiveness of state propaganda and repression in country.
Some figures in the broader Russian opposition movement expressed cautious hope for a more inclusive political alliance against Mr. Putin that would carry on Mr. Navalny’s legacy.
“I always called for a coalition because, among other reasons, I knew how vulnerable individual opposition leaders are,” Mr. Khodorkovsky said. “A coalition is much more stable as a system, because if one person leaves, others stay and new ones appear.”
His view was shared by Maxim Reznik, a former regional legislator from St. Petersburg, Russia, who continues to work in local politics from exile in Vilnius.
“I’ve always believed that their isolationist position is not the right one,” Mr. Reznik said of Mr. Navalny’s organization. “Alexei cannot be replaced, but we need some cooperation mechanism.”
The opposition’s initial reaction to Mr. Navalny’s death pointed in the direction of greater unity, at least for now. A unifying cause has centered around a ballot initiative that Mr Navalny endorsed on social media on February 1, in one of his last public statements.
The initiative, originally proposed by Mr. Reznik, calls on Russian voters to head to the polls at noon on election day, a vote that Mr. Putin is certain to win.
Mr Reznik said the initiative, essentially a political flash mob, was the safest way to express discontent in a country where any protest was punishable by prison terms.
“We want to show that the Emperor has no clothes,” Mr. Reznik said.
After Mr Navalny’s death, almost all prominent opposition figures had declared their support for the midday vote.
“This dragon, this beast, has destroyed everyone – killed our Lancelot, our hero. The question now concerns only us,” Mr. Reznik said, referring to the Russian government. “Either we go out and show the world that Russians are not slaves to the regime, or we don’t.”
“And I’m really afraid of the second scenario,” he added.
Ivan Nechepurenko, Neil MacFarquhar and Anton Trojanowski contributed to the report. Oleg Matsnev contributed to the research.
