“I believe that the darkness will disappear”

Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who exactly two years ago returned to Moscow from Germany, where he underwent rehabilitation for several months after being poisoned in Russia with a chemical warfare agent from the “Novichok” group, and since that day has been deprived of his freedom, published a post on social networks.

“Russia is my country. I am not going to give them my country and I believe that the darkness will disappear,” Navalny writes. According to the oppositionist, he is a full-fledged citizen and has the right to unite on the topic of those who think the same as him and to conduct political activities. “And there are many of us, certainly more than corrupt judges, lying propagandists and Kremlin thieves,” adds Navalny, who has been in a high-security colony in the Vladimir region since June of last year.

After his return to Russia and his arrest in January 2020, Navalny was initially replaced with a conditional sentence in the Yves Roche case. Then they were tried in the case of defamation of a veteran (sentenced to a fine) and in the case of fraud and insulting a judge (sentenced to nine years in prison). At the moment, several more criminal cases have been initiated against him.

During Navalny’s stay in the colony, the Russian authorities actually completely destroyed political structures associated with the opposition. The politician’s headquarters and the Anti-Corruption Fund organized by him were declared “extremist organizations” and banned in Russia, dozens of their members are either under arrest or forced to leave Russia.