Opposition leader Navalny while in prison continues to fight with Kremlin
2023.01.17 11:02
Opposition leader Navalny while in prison continues to fight with Kremlin
By Kristina Sobol
Budrigannews.com – Alexei Navalny, a Kremlin critic who is currently behind bars, used the second anniversary of his incarceration on Tuesday to make it clear that he will continue to oppose the Kremlin, as his family and friends launched a campaign to free him.
The 46-year-old Navalny was detained precisely two years ago as he was returning to Russia from Germany, where he had been treated for poisoning with a lethal nerve agent from the Soviet era in what he and some Western nations claimed was an attempt to assassinate the Russian government. The Kremlin denied responsibility.
“Our exhausted, miserable Motherland must be saved. “It has been pillaged, injured, dragged into an aggressive war, and turned into a prison run by the most dishonest and deceitful scoundrels,” Navalny wrote via his lawyers on Twitter.
“It is important to oppose this gang, even if it is only symbolic in my limited capacity at the moment. I don’t want to give them my country, and I think the darkness will eventually go away.”
Navalny is the most well-known of the few remaining voices of opposition in Russia. He has gained followers through a series of investigations that claim to demonstrate that the ruling class has lavishly enriched themselves at the expense of the state.
In 2021, the Kremlin was forced to deny that Putin was the owner of a lavish Black Sea palace, as Navalny claimed in a YouTube video with 125 million views. Navalny is never mentioned by name by Putin.
In two separate fraud cases, which he claimed were fabricated to silence him, the lawyer-turned-activist has been given a combined sentence of 11-and-a-half years in prison, and his anti-corruption organization has been banned as extremist.
His daughter, Dasha Navalnaya, made an appearance in a video on Tuesday to launch a campaign to free her father. She said that her father was being unfairly and repeatedly imprisoned in solitary confinement because he strongly opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine.
“Of course, his anti-war statements are the real reason my dad is in a punishment cell. In order to silence him, they are now torturing him and cutting him off from the outside world,” Navalnaya stated.
“However, my father has no fear and will continue to fight. My father is innocent and ought to be free.
In the past, Russia’s federal prison service, FSIN, has defended Navalny’s conditions, while the authorities assert that Navalny is being held legally.
The campaign to get him out is meant to get support in Russia, make his situation known, and get money from other countries.