It goes back further than that. He was widely seen as the most viable opposition candidate in the 2018 presidential election, before being banned from running o

It goes back further than that. He was widely seen as the most viable opposition candidate in the 2018 presidential election, before being banned from running on trumped up charges. https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/06/17/aleksei-navalnys-protesters-are-a-force-to-be-reckoned-with https://www.economist.com/europe/2017/06/17/aleksei-navalnys... I don't know much about his political views; Wikipedia confirms that he does advocate nationalism and controlled immigration, but also supports legalising same-sex marriage, and opposed the annexation of Crimea and Russian interventions in Syria. He certainly comes across as less hawkish than Putin based on that.