As part of its annual Sedona Forum, the McCain Institute presented Dasha Navalnaya, daughter of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, with a posthumous Courage and Leadership Award in her father’s name on the evening of Friday, May 3, at Enchantment Resort. The award was presented by Jack McCain, the son of the institute’s namesake, the late U.S. Sen. John McCain [R-Ariz.], and David Axelrod, a former chief of staff for President Barack Obama.
Navalny died at the age of 47 on Feb. 16 while serving a 19-year sentence on charges of extremism in the Siberian gulag. His death has frequently been attributed to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We were devastated to learn about the passing of Alexei Navalny, who died at the hands of the Kremlin, but we were inspired by his courage,” McCain said. “Every one of us is an imperfect avatar for the causes which we fight on behalf of. But at the end of Alexei’s story, he willingly gave his life for the cause in which he believed and there is no higher act of human courage … He was courageous and always goodhumored right to the end. And he will always remain an inspiration to those that fight for democracy.”
Navalny began his anti corruption campaign in 2007 by purchasing shares in state-run energy companies Rosneft and Gazprom, among others, and used his legal training and shareholder status to obtain evidence of the companies’ corruption, which he then posted on his LiveJournal blog. With Zakjar Prilepin and Sergei Gulyaev, he also cofounded the National Russian Liberation Movement in 2007.
In 2011, Navalny formed the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a nonprofit that would eventually be branded an extremist organization by the Russian government and outlawed in 2021. He was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Moscow following a nerve agent poisoning in 2020 that involved a strain of the novichok nerve agent family that he attributed to the Kremlin.
“In 2013, my father was convicted with fabricated embezzlement charges, and even then, over a decade ago, Sen. McCain called for the immediate release of my dad, and all political prisoners in Russia,” Dasha Navalnaya said. “So I want to take this opportunity to thank, remind you of and to call upon the immediate release of thousands of courageous men and women who are still in prison for standing up against the war, and the corruption and injustice in Russia.”
The award came a few days before Russian President Vladimir Putin was sworn in for his fifth six-year term on Tuesday, May 7.
“With [Putin] at the helm, our country will have neither peace, nor development, nor freedom,” Alexei’s widow Yulia Navalnaya said in a Tuesday, May 7 video. “The foundation of the Putin regime is lies and corruption. Huge sums of money are stolen from all of us every day to fund bombings of peaceful cities, riot police beating people with batons, propagandists spreading lies. And also for their own places, yachts and private jets. And as long as this continues, we can’t stop the fight.”
“My dad has always said that detention centers and prisons are the best ways to catch up on all of your wanted readings,” Dasha Navalnaya said. “I’m a college student with a bunch of readings on my own. But I’m eternally grateful to him for doing so. One of those books was ‘Believer’ by David Axelrod.”
Axelrod said that his political career was inspired by John F. Kennedy Jr. and Robert Kennedy, which led Navalnaya to want to learn more about those men, and drew a historical parallel between the assassinations of the Kennedys and Navalny.
“A few days after he started his campaign for the presidency that ended so tragically in 1968, Robert Kennedy addressed students at the University of Kansas at a time of great turmoil in the country, and he challenged them to imagine what the future could be, and to activate themselves to win that future,” Axelrod said.
