Trump is no Navalny, and prosecution in a democracy is a lot different than persecution in Putin’s Russia

(The Conversation is an independent and nonprofit source of news, analysis and commentary from academic experts.)

James D. Long, University of Washington

(THE CONVERSATION) The death of Russian dissident Alexei Navalny, announced on Feb. 16, 2024, lays bare to the world the costs of political persecutions. Although his cause of death remains unknown, the 47-year-old died while serving a 19-year sentence in a Siberian penal colony.

“Three days ago, Vladimir Putin killed my husband,” said Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, in a Feb. 19 video.

As an anti-corruption activist turned opposition leader, Navalny shone a light on the brutal excesses of President Putin’s regime. Like Navalny, Putin’s political opponents are routinely subjected to sham investigations, detained without due process and often die under suspicious circumstances. Navalny survived poisoning in 2020.

Not a week since the death and former President Donald Trump already compared himself favorably to Navalny. “The sudden death of Alexei Navalny has made me more and more aware of what is happening in our Country,” Trump wrote on social media. Prosecutors, the courts and his political opponents, including President Joe Biden, were “leading us down a path to...