A historian and renowned Russia expert in my country (Estonia) commented that this was probably bad timing for Putin. Now, as a martyr, Navalnyi is much more of a disturbance to Putin's regimen than he would have been as an isolated opposition leader serving a 19-year prison sentence, which rendered him not a direct threat to Putin. Like the expert put it: as a political prisoner, Navalnyi was already simply forgotten by many. [1]

Somehow this got me flipping through a book by Anna Politkovskaya, Russian journalist extraordinaire who covered the Second Chechen War and was shot dead in Moscow in 2006, on the birthday of Putin. [2]

I want to think that the age of massive online information does make at least a slight difference as to how much of the reasons behind events like these see the light of day eventually. Rest in peace, Alexei Navalnyi.

1: https://news.err.ee/1609255851/historian-navalny-s-death-wil... (Interestingly, the paragraph on Navalnyi being more of a disturbance now, after being declared dead, was not included in the English version of this news story. This is quite surprising, since ERR is actually a very well balanced source of news. All in all, that story includes interesting takes on Navalny as a politician, too, by another highly respeced Russia expert from Estonia.)

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Politkovskaya