That’s Oleg on the left — the late Alexei Navalny’s baby brother, whom I mistakenly placed on my list of imprisoned Hostages, when in fact he has fled further prosecution (and persecution) by the Russian government and is in hiding.

Two sons, lost to their aging parents — one forever, the other facing an unknown future in an unknown land, unable for an indeterminate amount of time to return to his homeland. All because — and only because — they dared to oppose the despotic regime of Vladimir Putin.

But the murder of one and the forced exile of the other have not killed their spirit. Because Alexei’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, lives on — though also in exile — and has assumed the mantle previously worn by her husband as head of the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), created by him in 2011 to do just as its name implies: to fight corruption, in all of its forms, in Russia.

And now she also bears the official title of “fugitive.” The Basmanny District Court in Moscow has formally accused her of “participation in an extremist organization,” and has recently ordered her to be arrested in absentia. Little more than a formality as long as she remains outside of Russia, the order nevertheless has rendered Yulia and her two children — Dasha, 23, and Zakhar, 16 — stateless. If they return home, they are as good as dead.

But Yulia is not alone. Other loyal members of the ACF, also in exile, continue the fight by her side, unearthing and publicizing the sickening truths behind the false face of Vladimir Putin, his administration, and his war — still euphemistically referred to in Russia as a “special military operation” — against Ukraine. They have lost the corporeal presence of their beloved leader; but his spirit lives on. And as long as it does, the fight against tyranny will continue.

This is why I continue to write (perhaps ad nauseam) about Alexei Navalny, and about the other Hostages remaining in Putin’s archipelago of prison camps. And why I persist in reminding you — my readers — that:

“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
7/11/24