Castro Street is the world’s most generous stage for the daily live performance of San Francisco free expression. It is where America’s gay rights movement found fertile ground and where people from across the USA can land and find a community that celebrates brave individuals who may elsewhere be oppressed.

For this reason, it was appropriately symbolic that the San Francisco premiere of the documentary “Navalny” was screened at the Castro Theatre as part of the S.F. International Film Festival. The film is about imprisoned Russian dissident Alexei Navalny and his struggle against the corrupt and criminal regime of Vladimir Putin.

Navalny’s daughter, Dasha, was at the Castro with the film producers to view and discuss the extraordinary and thriller-like documentary. The film follows Navalny’s activities, from his full-throated political opposition to his poisoning, and then, while recovering from the poisoning in Germany, his preparation to return and continue to fight for justice in Putin’s Russia — landing him again in prison. It is now viewable on CNN. Watch it! READ MORE

Vladimir Putin has spent years trying to divide the West by undermining elections, invading neighbors and aggressively using Russian oil and gas as a ham-handed bargaining tool. These concerted and clever efforts have suddenly, however, revealed the New Putin: Despite his best efforts and plans, he’s become a uniter, not a divider of the West.

Early 2018 had Putin heading towards a staggering, but not surprising, electoral victory against dead and disqualified opposition candidates. This dominance allowed Russia’s president to ride his eventual 76.6 percent final poll tally to a new level of cavalier confidence on the global stage. Political dominance at home and fawning support from President Trump gave him a delusional sense of invincibility. It led him to overreach and miscalculate.

Now, well over 20 Western countries have joined together to give Putin the one-finger salute for a U.K. chemical agent attack he is suspected of either directing or condoning. The targets in the assassination attempt in Salisbury were a former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter Yulia. READ MORE

‘Navalny’ is a reminder of San Francisco’s outsized human rights role

Putin’s power, arrogance lead to costly Russian miscalculation that unites West