Russia’s most famous opposition politician, Alexei Navalny, affirmed this Wednesday that President Vladimir Putin’s State will one day crumble along with the post-Soviet elite, which he calls venal, power-hungry and deceitful. From his cell, the opponent sent a message against the Russian president: “One day we will look at his place and he will not be there”.
Navalny, 47, is a former lawyer who rose to fame more than a decade ago by denounce the corruption of Putin’s elite. He is currently in a prison about 60 km north of the Arctic Circle.
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“Polygamists have become conservatives in our country. Members of the CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) are now Orthodox (Christians). The owners of ‘golden passports’ and accounts in tax havens are now aggressive patriots,” Navalny said in a social media post provided by his followers.
“Lies, lies and nothing but lies,” he stated, while announcing that the current president’s government “will collapse and fall apart.” “Putin’s state is not viable. One day we will look at his place and he will not be there”he added.
Alexei Navalny (right) is sentenced to prison until he is 74 years old.
Navalny, sentenced to remain in prison until the age of 74, repeatedly warned that Putin’s Russia is a state run by “thieves and criminals” and that one day seismic change will occur through revolt. However, he is not the first to make such predictions. Since Putin ascended to the top of the Kremlin on the last day of 1999, opponents have more than once predicted his political demise, and to date, they have all been wrong.
For its part, Russian authorities call Navalny’s criticism nonsense and they claim that he and his supporters are extremists linked to the US intelligence agency CIA who seek to sow discord in Russia. For that reason, Navalny is in jail, his movement is banned and most of his main supporters fled abroad.
Navalny disappeared from a prison and is feared to have been taken to a “special regime” gulag
The former lawyer earned the admiration of the divided Russian opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021, for which he was imprisoned. Navalny was in Germany as he had undergone treatment for an attempted poisoning with a nerve agent in Siberia, which was detected by Western laboratories. However, Russia denies Navalny’s claims that Russian secret police poisoned him with Novichok.
After being arrested, he said, his fellow prisoners repeatedly asked him why he returned to his native country. In this regard, he stated that modern Russia was instilled with “cynicism and conspiracy” to such an extent that many people no longer believed in simple motivations, suspecting instead that he was part of some secret Kremlin intrigue.
“I have my country and my convictions. And I don’t want to give up my country or my convictions. And I cannot betray either the first or the second,” said the opponent. “If your convictions are worth anything, you must be willing to defend them. And if necessary, make sacrifices,” he concluded.
mb / ds