Alexei Navalny

Alexei Anatolievich Navalny (Russian: Алексе́й Анато́льевич Нава́льный, Russian pronunciation: [ɐlʲɪkˈsʲej ɐnɐˈtolʲɪvʲɪtɕ nɐˈvalʲnɨj]; born June 4, 1976) is a Russian lawyer, political and financial activist, and politician. Since 2009, he has gained prominence in Russia, and in the Russian and international media, as a critic of corruption and of Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has organized large-scale demonstrations promoting democracy and attacking political corruption, Putin, and Putin's political allies; he has run for a political office on the same platform. In 2012, The Wall Street Journal described him as "the man Vladimir Putin fears most".

A self-described nationalist democrat, Navalny is a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member and the leader of the political party Progress Party, formerly People's Alliance. In September 2013, he ran in the Moscow mayoral election, supported by the RPR-PARNAS party. He came in second, with 27% of the vote, losing to incumbent mayor Sergei Sobyanin, a Putin appointee. His vote total was much higher than political analysts had expected, but Navalny and his allies insisted that the actual number was still higher, and that authorities had committed election fraud in order to prevent a runoff election from taking place.

Russian opposition

The Russian opposition is composed of various political parties, movements and groups of citizens, who disagree with government organs of Russia and stand for their change.

Background and white-ribbon opposition

Most opposition organizations independent from the Kremlin encounter a draconian law on political parties, refusals of registration by the Justice Ministry, censorship in major mass media, primarily federal TV channels. According to Vladimir Ryzhkov, "over the last 4 years (i.e. from 2007 - Ed.) for identical "formal reason" nine political parties were denied registration - from left to right. And not any new party was registered. In modern Russia, this is not possible".

Recently, for the protesters for Fair Elections the term white ribbon opposition has been applied, as they wore white ribbons as their symbol.

Actions and campaigns of the opposition

Current campaigns of the opposition:

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin (/ˈpuːtɪn/; Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин; IPA: [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr vlɐˈdʲimʲɪrəvʲɪtɕ ˈputʲɪn], born 7 October 1952) has been the President of Russia since 7 May 2012, succeeding Dmitry Medvedev. Putin previously served as President from 2000 to 2008, and as Prime Minister from 1999 to 2000 and again from 2008 to 2012. During his last term as Prime Minister, he was also the chairman of United Russia, the ruling party.

For 16 years, Putin was an officer in the KGB, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel before he retired to enter politics in his native Saint Petersburg in 1991. He moved to Moscow in 1996 and joined President Boris Yeltsin's administration where he rose quickly, becoming Acting President on 31 December 1999 when Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Putin easily won the subsequent 2000 presidential election and was reelected in 2004. Because of constitutionally mandated term limits, Putin was ineligible to run for a third consecutive presidential term in 2008. Dmitry Medvedev won the 2008 presidential election and appointed Putin as Prime Minister, beginning a period of so-called "tandemocracy". In September 2011, following a change in the law extending the presidential term from four years to six, Putin announced that he would seek a third, non-consecutive term as President in the 2012 presidential election, an announcement which led to large-scale protests in many Russian cities. In March 2012, he won the election, which was criticized for procedural irregularities, and is serving a six-year term.