Hi, this is Navalny. I want to say that I’m doing well, because I have the most important thing a person in my situation needs: your support. Believe me, I can feel it. Unfortunately, I can’t comment on the news and current events—I simply don’t know about them—so I decided I’d write here about some facts from my life instead. Today I’ll talk about whether this is hard for me—that’s a frequent question. Nope, it’s not hard. As they say, prison is in the mind. And if you really think about it, it becomes clear that I’m not in prison at all, but on a space voyage. Judge for yourselves. I have a simple, Spartan-looking cabin: an iron bed, a table, and a bedside cabinet. There’s no room for luxury on a spaceship. The cabin door can only be opened from mission control. People in uniform come in to see me; they say only a few stock phrases, and on their chests a little light from a switched-on video camera is glowing—they’re androids. I don’t cook my food—it’s delivered straight to my cabin by an automated cart. My plates and spoons are made of shiny metal. Just like in a space movie, the ship’s command center communicates with me. Literally, a voice from the wall over the intercom says: three-zero-two, prepare for sanitary treatment. And I reply: uh-huh, okay, in 10 minutes. Let me just finish my tea. So of course, at moments like that, I understand that I’m on a space voyage, flying toward a beautiful new world. Could I, a fan of books and films about space, have turned down a flight like this, even if it lasts three years? Obviously not. Yes, space travel is dangerous. You can arrive and find there’s nothing there. The journey can turn out to be much longer because of a navigation error. A random asteroid can destroy the ship, and you die. But help often comes too. A friendly signal. A hyperspace tunnel—whoosh—and you’re already there. Hugging your family and friends in that beautiful new world. There is just one big difference from the space movies. I have no weapons at all. And what if xenomorphs attack the ship? I doubt I could fight them off with a kettle. Maybe I’ll sharpen a spoon on the wall 😉