Alexei Navalny’s death on Feb. 16 was shocking but not surprising. He was a thorn in the side of Vladimir Putin because of his popularity as an anti-corruption activist. Early in Putin’s tenure, he called out the corruption of the Putin regime. He established the Anti-Corruption Foundation and became widely admired in Russia and beyond. In 2021, he had more than 6 million YouTube subscribers.
He was twice arrested on false embezzlement charges, which were used as a pretext for preventing him from running for Putin’s office in 2018. In 2020, he was poisoned with the chemical agent Novichok, a substance only available to the Russian military. Miraculously, he recovered from this in a hospital in Germany but insisted on returning to Russia and almost certain arrest on false charges of corruption.
Once back in Russia, he was imprisoned for violating his parole from previous, falsified charges and subsequently given prison sentences on extremism charges, i.e., being relentless in his condemnation of Putin. When he was mysteriously transferred to an Arctic Circle prison colony in 2023, the stage was set for his sudden death, far from prying eyes. There is no question or doubt that Putin, who has a long history of murdering his opposition, is directly responsible for Navalny’s unexplained death.
Navalny is a true, modern-day martyr. He resisted the advice of family and friends who warned him about returning to Russia. He responded, according to The New York Times, by saying: “I don’t want to give up either my country or my beliefs, I cannot betray either the first or the second. If your beliefs are worth something, you must be willing to stand up for them. And, if necessary, make some sacrifices.” Navalny made the ultimate sacrifice and will be remembered in Russian and world history as the martyr who stood up to Putin.
His death comes at a critical moment in international politics. The war in Ukraine is grinding on into a third year, defying the odds that a small nation could withstand the onslaught of Russian missiles and bombs. Nuclear blackmail prevents NATO from physically coming to the aid of Ukraine. Instead, Western Europe and the United States are left fighting a proxy war through the blood and sweat of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers. Without Western aid, Ukraine would have fallen, long ago, into Putin’s plan to turn it into a puppet state of Mother Russia.
Most troubling of all, at this moment in history, is the hypocrisy of Congress in dragging its feet on continuing to provide essential aid to Ukraine. Initially, securing our southern border against the influx of migrants was the condition for providing assistance to Ukraine and Israel. When a bipartisan compromise passed the Senate with the most sweeping border reforms in the last 30 years, it was rejected because its passage would have neutralized a neuralgic campaign issue for November.
As we witness what is taking place in Washington today, it is a mistake to analyze these machinations as politics as usual. Navalny’s death at the hands of Vladimir Putin, the thousands of civilian deaths in Ukraine, and the deaths of thousands of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers are a moral outrage. What is taking place is not politics as usual. It is scandalous behavior that is threatening the peace and security of the whole world.
When Neville Chamberlain tried to appease Adolph Hitler in the late 1930s, it did not work. Hitler marched into the Sudetenland, Poland, and Austria. World War II was the result. Isolationists in this country like Charles Lindbergh and Ambassador Joseph Kennedy resisted Franklin D. Roosevelt’s wise assessment that Hitler needed to be stopped. Pearl Harbor changed everything and by the time 1945 had ended, the world had a crystal-clear lesson that appeasement of megalomaniacs never works.
The politics that are being played today with regard to the southern border and aid to Ukraine are reminiscent of what Jon Meacham describes in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Abraham Lincoln. An 1836 pro-slavery majority in Congress succeeded in passing a House rule that prevented any discussion of the abolition of slavery. We can only ask if a pro-Putin majority in Congress is trying to accomplish what Russian bombs can’t accomplish on the battlefield. The bottom line is that morality needed to trump politics in 1836, in 1939, and desperately needs to do so in 2024.
Msgr. Paul V. Garrity is a senior priest of the Archdiocese of Boston and former pastor of St. Mary’s Parish and School in Lynn.
