With Navalny’s death, Russia’s opposition loses its last leader

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s best-known and most indefatigable Kremlin opposition figure who died in an Arctic penal colony Friday under as yet unknown circumstances, might best be viewed as the proverbial “canary in the coal mine” of Russian politics.

Mr. Navalny’s life was often a sharp illustration of the hopes, frustrations, and limits faced by the first post-Soviet generation under the nearly 2 1/2 decades of Vladimir Putin’s rule. At every stage, he pushed the limits. He enjoyed some unusual successes, and was punished in ways both predictable – as through the Kremlin-controlled legal