Он вам не Димон

Hi there! Actual Russian here. Aleksei Navalny is indeed a de-facto leader of Russian opposition. >- He isn't coming second in any polls Not true. [1] is the only major election in which Aleksei personally participated. He came second with huge gap between him and the third one (despite state-organized media campaign against him). Moreover, it seems you misunderstand Russian political climate. There are no real political parties here except those loyal to Putin. Most "candidates" in that wiki list are sock puppets with the exceptions of Navalny and Khodorkovsky. Khodorkovsky is not really a politician at this point, so your ironic assessment of > journalists act as if there are only two politicians in Russia, Putin and this other guy …is actually true. Here are a couple of other data points for ya: - Navalny's NGO called FBK (Фонд Борьбы с Коррупцией, Anti-Corruption Fund) made two biggest investigations to date: on Chayka (Russian's Prosecutor General) [2] and on Medvedev (our prime minister) [3] ([4]). They have more than 20M views between them on Youtube alone (there are countless copies on other social networks) and the latter triggered biggest demonstrations in 5 years. - FBK voluntarily publishes financial reports which you can find here [5]. According to them, FBK got 40 million rubles in donations during 2015. This alone makes them most-donated-to political NGO in Russia by far. All in all, I believe this particular fact check lead you astray. [1]: [link] [2]: [link]

> This would not have been a subplot in a Le Carre novel. Not sure I understand what you're trying to say. Are you claiming your (b) is more likely than your (a)? And it is so because of something to do with the Nord Stream pipeline? That's quite some conspiracy theory. I don't find this likely. Why? I watched the youtube clip where Navalny dupes one of the members of the team assigned to assassinate him. And what struck me is how charismatic Navalny is. He is a formidable political opponent to Putin. I can certainly see Putin preferring to live in a Navalny-less world. Aside from his charisma, is it possible that everything Navalny puts on Youtube is fabrication? How difficult can it be to get a prop to answer a phone call and read some lines emailed to him ahead of time? It probably wouldn't be, but you'd see people pointing at various inconsistencies. I just found an older youtube documentary created by Navalny about Medvedev [1]. Could it also be a fabrication? I seriously doubt that: New York Times covered this, as well as other prestigious publications, and they don't suspect any shenanigans. [1] [this video]