From New York Times, I'm Michael Obaro. This is a Daily.

Over the weekend, a standoff between President Vladimir Putin and his loudest critic

turned into a showdown in the streets of Russia.

Today, my colleague Anton Troyanovsky with the improbable story of Alexei Navalny.

It's Monday, January 25th.

Anton, tell me about Alexei Navalny.

So, he's a real estate lawyer. He's 44 years old.

He got his start around 2007 as a shareholder rights activist.

He would buy small numbers of shares and various Russian state owned companies

and then sue them for information that he would then put on a blog

that quickly became widely read among people in the finance industry in Moscow.

So, more and more, he made a name for himself as an anti-corruption activist

kind of investigating the hidden wealth of the Russian elite,

the questionable financial transactions made by Russian officials and people close to them.

And he increasingly started dabbling in politics.

And his breakout moment as a politician came in 2011.

That was back when Putin announces that he's going to run for president again.

Which was a big shock to a lot of people in Russia who had hoped that the country

would see a more liberal turn.

And you have this big explosion of protests that Navalny ends up leading.

He becomes someone who can get thousands of people out into the streets

with his Twitter posts, with his blog posts.

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