The New York-based Train Foundation presented its 2022 Civil Courage Prize to Russian politician Aleksei Navalny in absentia in an evening ceremony on October 24 at New York University.
The Train Foundation cited Navalny’s “groundbreaking work for freedom and transparency in Russia” in presenting the award.
Navalny's chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, one of two colleagues who accepted the award on his behalf, said Navalny “proves his courage every day" as he serves his sentence in a cell that is roughly 2 meters by 3 meters in a Russian prison.
“Every day is an exercise in civil courage,” Volkov said at the award ceremony.
Ballet dancer, choreographer, and actor Mikhail Baryshnikov, 74, also spoke during the ceremony, saying Navalny’s mission is to “champion a more democratic vision for Russia.”
Baryshnikov, who defected to Canada in 1974 while touring with the Soviet state ballet and later moved to the United States, said Navalny is “insanely brave” for fighting “another brutal authoritarian Russia.”
Navalny announced last week that he is being investigated in a new probe looking into alleged propagandizing terrorism and calling for and financing extremist actions.
Those charges could keep him in prison for 30 years, Navalny said on social media.
Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and other groups associated with the outspoken Kremlin critic, as well as his political movement, were declared "extremist organizations" by Russian authorities in June 2021 and disbanded.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon his arrival in Moscow from Germany, where he was treated for a poison attack with what European labs defined as a Soviet-style nerve agent.
He was then handed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence for violating the terms of an earlier parole because of his convalescence abroad. The original conviction is widely regarded as a trumped-up, politically motivated case.
In March, he was handed a nine-year prison term on charges of contempt and embezzlement through fraud that he and his supporters have repeatedly rejected as politically motivated. A court in Moscow last week rejected Navalny's move to have that sentence struck down.