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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***On Feb. 16, 2024, Russian opposition leader and activist Alexei Navalny collapsed and died after a walk in the penal colony where he was being held north of the Arctic circle. Navalny was one of Vladimir Putin’s most vocal critics – he organized anti-government rallies, investigated and exposed corruption within Putin’s government, and in 2018 attempted to run for president against Putin before being barred from the election. In 2020, he survived a Federal Security Service (FSB)-linked Novichok nerve agent poisoning and convalesced in Germany, but returned to Russia in 2021, where he was promptly arrested. We asked three experts what his death means for Russia and for the country’s remaining political opposition.Read more below. Mark Galeotti Executive Director Mayak IntelligenceRussian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s death — directly or indirectly at President Vladimir Putin’s behest — almost certainly reflects a sense in the Kremlin itself that it is weaker, or at least more vulnerable. At its peak, it largely did not feel it needed to kill its enemies. Now, with the deaths of Navalny and businessman-mercenary Yevgeny Prigozhin, the imprisonment of liberal and ultra-nationalist critics alike, and the crescendo of repression, “late Putinism” is revealed as its banana republic phase, depending on thuggery and fear rather than co-optation and spin. There is no room now for opposition leaders, yet public discontent is increasing. The Kremlin may yet regret its actions, as this means that when or if there is any general protest, it will generate its own new leaders, unknown quantities who could just as easily be communists as fascists, anarchists