Welcome to the Lost Debate, a show for Political Ecclectics.

I'm Ravi Gupta, and I'm coming to you for the second time in 24 hours,

because I didn't expect to jump on this podcast right now,

but I just read the news that Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny passed away in prison.

And I think the proper way to say it is he was murdered in prison, no matter what the

circumstances are, this was a political hit.

And if you don't know who Navalny is, he was a lawyer, anti-corruption activist, a political

prisoner most recently, and he came to prominence by organizing anti-government demonstrations.

He eventually ran for office, advocating for

reform of the political system and against corruption in Russia. And he was really a thorn in the side

of Vladimir Putin. And Putin tried to poison him, did poison him actually with Novichok nerve agents,

nearly killed Navalny. Navalny went to Germany to get treatment.

And it was in Germany that he did some rather remarkable things, one of which is chronicled

in this Navalny Doctor, Memory, which is on HBO, which is amazing.

I think I won the Oscar for Best Documentary.

And the scene is incredible.

Navalny in this scene is working with Belling Cat and

other investigative journalists and he's kind of giving them a speech saying, look, guys, we need to

stop thinking about the bad guys as, you know, all-knowing and, you know, thinking about them as

perfect that they're not going to make mistakes. And he told this story, I don't know if it was

apocryphal or not, about FSB agent who had his email hacked.

And apparently his email password originally was Moscow 1.

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