From the MT:
“Navalny Says ‘No Regrets’ on
Anniversary of Return to Russia”
(Alexei Navalny and his wife
Yulia Navalnaya)
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei
Navalny said Monday he does not regret choosing to return to Russia on year ago
despite his immediate arrest and the harsh crackdown on his movement that
followed. Navalny said his Jan. 17, 2021, detention on old fraud charges at
Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport prevented him from “taking a single step in my
country as a free person.” The fierce Putin foe described his efforts to
uncover high-level corruption and win domestic support as part of a “tug of
war” between “bravery and fear.” “I tried as hard as I could to pull my end of
the rope, pulling over to my side those who are honest and no longer afraid,”
Navalny wrote in an Instagram post from prison. “I don’t regret it for a
second,” he said.
The 45-year-old opposition leader
touched down in Moscow last year after spending months in Germany recovering
from a near-fatal poisoning with what Western scientists identified as the
banned Soviet-designed nerve agent Novichok. Navalny blames his poisoning in Siberia on the
Kremlin, which denies involvement and questions whether the Aug. 20, 2021,
incident took place at all. Investigative journalists have linked Navalny’s
poisoning to Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB). He is now serving a
2.5-year prison sentence in a penal colony on charges of violating a 2014
suspended sentence by skipping check-ins with Russia’s prison service while
recovering in Germany. Navalny’s January 2021 arrest was followed by a sweeping
crackdown on his political and activist groups, with a court ruling formally
outlawing them as “extremist” in June.
In Monday’s Instagram post,
Navalny said he was informed that he will go to court next week in one of
several additional criminal cases opened against him. “There’s another one next
where I’m an extremist and a terrorist,” he wrote. “I don't know at all when
my… journey will end or whether it will end at all.” A court on Monday turned
down one appeal Navalny had brought against authorities over his treatment in
the penal colony and postponed another. Navalny appeared in court via video
link, sitting behind bars in a prison uniform before the Petushki district
court in the Vladimir region where he is being held. The cases heard on Monday
concerned his prison salary and his designation as prone to
"extremism," which news agencies said the court would revisit in
three months.
^ Navalny has done more good for
Russia in his 1 year in prison than Putin has in his 22 years in power. ^
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