Politician Alexei Navalny, who is serving a sentence in a colony, wrote post on the anniversary of his return to Russia and detention. A message on his behalf was published on his social networks.
The Insider quotes the full text:
“Exactly one year ago I returned home to Russia.
I didn’t manage to get a single step through my country as a free man, I was arrested even before the border control.
The hero of one of my favorite books – “Resurrection” by Leo Tolstoy – says: “Yes, the only place befitting an honest person in Russia at the present time is a prison.”
It sounds nice, but it was wrong then, and even more so now.
There are a lot of honest people in Russia – tens of millions. There are a lot more of them than is commonly thought.
But the authorities – disgusting then, and now even more – are not at all honest people, but those who are not afraid. Or rather, I will clarify: those who may be afraid, but overcome fear.
There are also a lot of them – we constantly meet them in different places: from rallies to the remaining independent media. Yes, even here on Instagram. I recently read about how employees who like my posts are expelled from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. So in Russia-2022, even a like can be a manifestation of courage.
At all times, this is the essence of politics: the king, who wants to appropriate the right of sole uncontrolled power, must intimidate the honest ones who do not fight. And those, in turn, must convince everyone around that there is no need to be afraid. That there are an order of magnitude more honest than the guards of the tsar. Why live in fear all your life, and even be robbed, if you can arrange everything differently – more fairly.
And it’s an endless swing. Or a tug of war: today you are brave, tomorrow you seem to be a little scared. And the day after tomorrow they scared you so much that you despaired and became brave again.
I don’t know at all when my space journey will end and whether it will end at all – only on Friday I was informed that another of my criminal cases was going to court. And one more thing is next in line – where I am an extremist and a terrorist. So I am one of those “cosmonauts” who do not count the days until the end of the term. Che there to count. And for 27 years people were imprisoned.
But I ended up in this detachment of cosmonauts precisely because I tried, as best I could, to pull this end of the rope. He drew to this side those among the honest who do not want or can no longer be afraid.
I did it, I don’t regret it for a second and I will continue to do it.
And, having served my first year in prison, I want to tell everyone exactly what I shouted to those gathered at the court when the convoy led me to the paddy wagon: don’t be afraid of anything.
This is our country and we have no other.
The only fear that should be is that we will leave our homeland to be plundered by a bunch of liars, thieves and hypocrites. We will surrender without a fight, voluntarily, both our future and the future of our children.
Thank you all so much for your support – I feel it.
In general, I want to say. The year went by terribly fast. It seems that only yesterday he entered the plane to Moscow, but he has already served a year. The truth is written in scientific books: time on earth and in space flows at different speeds 😉.
I love and hug everyone.”
Exactly a year ago, on January 17, the politician returned to Russia after a long treatment at the German clinic “Charite”, where he ended up due to poisoning with a potent poison from the Novichok group. He was immediately detained and accused of violating the terms of the probationary period in the Yves Rocher case. The court replaced his suspended sentence with a real one and sent him to IK-2 in the Vladimir Region.
The Insider, Belingcat and FBK published an investigation in which the names of the FSB officers who took part in the poisoning of Navalny with a substance that the OPCW recognized as a military toxin were named.
Later there were published the confession of Konstantin Kudryavtsev, who spoke with Alexei Navalny (thinking that he was talking to Patrushev’s assistant) and told many details of the assassination attempt. Among other things, he explained that Navalny’s life was saved by the actions of the pilots and atropine administered by the ambulance, and also specified that the poison was applied to his underpants, and the traffic police helped the FSB officers to clean up the traces.
Later, Vladimir Putin de facto validated the results of the investigation by The Insider and Bellingcat when he did not deny that the FSB officers named in the article were near Navalny on those very dates.