Alexey Navalny, the Russian opposition politician, has been in jail for nearly two months and on starvation strike for 2 weeks. His legal professionals’ common updates chronicle his regular bodily decline. After visiting Navalny in jail on Monday, the legal professional Olga Mikhailova said that he had misplaced fifteen kilograms (thirty-three kilos). He is shedding sensation in his fingers; he has already misplaced partial use of his legs. He is coughing and working a fever. Navalny continues to refuse meals and different vitamins till his demand to be seen by a medical specialist of his selection—a proper guaranteed by Russian legislation—is granted. In response, the jail administration is threatening to begin force-feeding him.
On January 17th, Navalny was arrested at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. He was coming back from Germany, the place he had spent 5 months recovering from being poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. He knew that he was going to be arrested, as a result of Russian authorities had broadcast their intentions by way of state media, apparently in hopes of persuading him to keep in another country. Navalny additionally knew what situations he was probably to expertise behind bars. Since the Kremlin cracked down in response to the 2011-12 protests towards rigged elections, Russian activists have turn into effectively acquainted with the nation’s jail system. In 2014, members of the protest-art group Pussy Riot—the primary of many activists to be jailed for peaceable protest—marked their launch from jail by beginning an internet information outlet that documented human-rights violations inside Russian prisons. (The newspaper, Mediazona, continues to be working, nevertheless it has broadened its focus in the previous few years.) One of the pillars of the protest motion that started in 2011 is a gaggle known as Russia Behind Bars, which has helped scores of nonpolitical prisoners. Its chief, Olga Romanova (who resides in exile in Berlin), has written extensively concerning the workings of the jail system.
Navalny’s anti-corruption work has additionally ready him for imprisonment. In a current letter posted to his Instagram account, he wrote, “The meat was stolen from our rations before they ever left Moscow. Butter and vegetables were stolen in Vladimir [the regional center]. Finally, on location, in Pokrov, the staff took home the last of the crumbs. All that remained for the inmates was glue-like porridge and frostbitten potatoes.” This is what Navalny does: he follows the cash—or, on this case, the contents of jail rations.
He is aware of the system higher than anybody; he is aware of that human life has no worth in it, and he by no means imagined that the system would make an exception for him. Within weeks of his arrest, he despatched a note to his pal and mentor, the journalist Yevgenia Albats. It learn:
Navalny’s spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, has no illusions, both. Last week, she despatched a letter to the top of the jail colony the place Navalny is serving time. The letter, which Navalnaya posted to her Instagram account, concluded with a reminder: “If the worst happens to Alexey, then you’ll have his death on your conscience, and Putin will have it on his conscience, but your Putin will eat you alive and lay the blame on you, too.” It’s chilling to see Navalnaya use the phrase “death” when she is writing about her husband, however this word didn’t require a leap of the creativeness. She had already spent weeks sitting by Navalny’s mattress, not figuring out whether or not he would discuss or stroll once more.
Back within the days of the usS.R., the pro-democracy dissident motion lived by the rule that, given the selection between jail and international exile, one ought to select exile. Early within the Putin period, when some former dissidents had been nonetheless round, they handed this knowledge on to members of the brand new opposition. The late dissident Yelena Bonner, for instance, persuaded the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky to depart the nation quite than threat arrest. The notion was that one might do extra good alive overseas than lifeless at house. This argument rested on the belief that the Soviet totalitarian state would final perpetually, or not less than a really very long time, and that the battle towards it could be everlasting.
Putin, who grew to become prime minister in August, 1999, and President at first of 2000, has held energy longer than any Soviet chief besides Stalin. Yet Navalny, who was fifteen years outdated when the Soviet Union collapsed, understands that Putinism is not going to final perpetually. During his arrest listening to in January, Navalny informed the decide that she would probably outlive Putin, and go to jail for sanctioning Navalny’s arrest (the decide then reprimanded him). Navalny’s word to Albats makes clear that he’s not sure he’ll stay to see a post-Putin Russia. But he believes that Russia after Putin shall be—or not less than might be—a basically totally different place. Unlike his dissident forebears, who believed that they had been combating for precept and private integrity however might by no means defeat the system, Navalny thinks that his actions will help form a future Russia. He additionally believes that, by performing with braveness and dedication, he can encourage others to put aside their fears. And then, as he virtually invariably says in public statements and personal notes, “everything will be all right.”
At a courtroom listening to in February, throughout his closing statement, Navalny talked about his imaginative and prescient for this future Russia:
For a decade, the slogan of the anti-Putin motion has been “Russia will be free.” Now, although, Navalny urged rethinking it.
Last week, police raided the Navalny group’s workplace in St. Petersburg and confiscated various large stickers bearing the phrase “Russia will be happy.” According to Leonid Volkov, who runs Navalny’s political group, the police eliminated the stickers to conduct an skilled evaluation of whether or not the slogan constitutes extremist speech, which is against the law in Russia.
On Tuesday, Yulia Navalnaya visited her husband in jail. In an Instagram publish, she wrote that he was weak, and thinner than he had been after weeks in a coma. “He said to say hello to everyone,” she wrote. “He didn’t have the strength to add that everything will be all right. So I’ll add that. He is the best. Everything will definitely be all right.”
