Who was Alexei Navalny? Why was he sentenced to 19 years in the maximum-security prison? And why was he finally killed? Russian journalist and a friend of Navalny’s of twenty years, Yevgenia Albats, tells the story of the slain Russian opposition leader and what it means for the future of the country.

Yevgenia Albats is a current fellow at the Shorenstein Center. She is a Russian investigative journalist, political scientist, author and radio host. She is editor-in-chief and CEO of The New Times, a Moscow-based, Russian language, independent political weekly. Since 2004, Albats has hosted Absolute Albats, a talk-show on Echo Moskvy, the last remaining liberal radio station in Russia, until it was taken off the air ten days into Russia’s war with Ukraine. Albats is currently living in the United States after she was forced to leave Russia facing persecution in Moscow for her reporting on the war in Ukraine. Albats was among the last Russian journalists to leave. Previously, Albats was an Alfred Friendly Press Fellow assigned to The Chicago Tribune in 1990 and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1993.  She graduated from Moscow State University in 1980 and received her Ph.D. in Political Science from Harvard University in 2004. She has been a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) since its founding in 1996. Since 2003, Albats has taught political science at Yale, the National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow, the University of Michigan, and New York University. She has been studying the secret services of the U.S.S.R and Russia since 1987, and is the author of four independently researched books, including The State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on Russia – Past, Present & Future.