Alexei Nawalny

Russian lawyer and political activist. Since 2009, he has gained prominence within Russia, and notably within the Russian media, as a critic of corruption in Russia, and especially of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. He has used his LiveJournal blog to organize large-scale demonstrations to address these issues. He also regularly writes articles in several Russian publications, such as Forbes Russia. In a 2011 interview with Reuters, he claimed that Putin's political system is so weakened by corruption that Russia could face an Arab Spring-style revolt within five years. Navalny is a Russian Opposition Coordination Council member and informal leader of unregistered Russian political party People's Alliance. He is an officially registered candidate (supported by the RPR-PARNAS party) in the election for Mayor of Moscow which will be held on 8 September 2013. Navalny was named "Person of the Year 2009" by Russian business newspaper Vedomosti. In 2010, with the recommendation of Garry Kasparov, Yevgenia Albats, Sergei Guriev and Oleg Tsyvinski, Navalny enrolled in Yale University's six-month "Yale World Fellows" training program. In 2011, the BBC described Navalny as "arguably the only major opposition figure to emerge in Russia in the past five years". In 2012, The Wall Street Journal claimed he was "the man Vladimir Putin fears most". He was the only Russian to be named in Time magazine's 2012 list of the world's 100 most influential people. But also in 2012, a cumulative three embezzlement and fraud accusations were brought against Navalny by Russian federal authorities. All three have been vigorously denied by Navalny. On 18 July 2013, he was sentenced to five years in corrective labor colony for embezzlement. Russian Memorial Human Rights Center has recognized Alexei Navalny as a political prisoner. He was subsequently released from prison a day after sentencing, awaiting the result of the appeal. Link to Wikipedia biography