Alexei Navalny, in his own words

Alexei Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader has reportedly died in one of the country’s harshest jails near the Arctic Circle The Economist interviewed Navalny in 2017, ahead of Russia’s 2018 presidential election which he was later barred from contesting Journalists worked out that I spent every fifth day of my election campaign in prison, behind bars And this, of course, describes very well what is happening in Russian politics Unfortunately, it doesn’t give me the slightest joy

or any pleasure but this has already become routine in my life But you should be ready for this if you are engaged in opposition fighting in an authoritarian country And this is emotionally interesting because, on the one hand you find yourself in court, and you understand that it is completely illegal to imprison you for 20 days And this is certainly very annoying because you’re seeing a mockery of justice, you’re seeing these false statements It really feels like a theatre of the absurd But on

the other hand, oddly enough, you always feel some kind of support The police are taking you to jail and they say, “well done!” Your jailers are saying “let’s find a place that doesn’t have a camera so we can take pictures with you” It’s a very interesting experience when you see that you get support even from people who, in theory, shouldn’t support you in any way Because the Kremlin is constantly trying to prove that the opposition movement in Russia is a narrow group, a group of very educate

d liberals “these people are so privileged, they have nothing to do so they go into opposition” For my part, I see, including when I’m in prison, that ordinary people support our ideas His [Putin’s] goal is very simple: he wants to be the emperor, tsar, autocrat of Russia for life And to be honest, I have little doubt that they are creating a new feudal system and they actually have the idea in their heads of transferring power simply by inheritance So de facto we already have a new Putin aristo

cracy, Putin’s new feudal lords Therefore, in this situation and in this political environment, in this political reality, I see my place as a person who is fighting with this, who is engaged in organisational activities, who is trying to unite people around me who want to oppose it There are a lot of people like this, many more than is commonly believed They are now disconnected from the political system But there are a lot of these people I’m fighting for a leadership position to lead these pe

ople