Lyubov Sobol was already among the most visible dissidents in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. At 32, she has fronted a protest movement, calling thousands to the streets when she and other opposition candidates were barred from standing in Moscow city elections last year. She staged a hunger strike and a sit-in at the offices of the Moscow election commission, eventually being lifted out of the building on a sofa after she refused to stand for police officers. A laughing Ms Sobol broadcast the incident live from her phone to her vast social media following. She has been sued by one of the most powerful businessmen in the country, and her husband has survived a poisoning. In 2016 an unknown assailant jabbed a syringe into his leg and injected a psychotropic substance that left him convulsing and unconscious, an attack Ms Sobol believes was linked to her activism. Now, with opposition leader Alexei Navalny in a coma in a German hospital after another suspected poisoning, the telegenic lawyer finds herself at the helm of his anti-Kremlin organisation. Doctors at Berlin’s Charite Hospital, where Mr Navalny was transferred from a Siberian clinic, have said he will probably survive the ordeal but may sustain long-term damage.
