The trial of Alexei Navalny and Daniil Kholodny has concluded. Prosecutors are seeking a combined sentence of 20 years in prison for Navalny, to be served in a maximum-security penal colony. For Kholodny, they are seeking 10 years in prison to be served in a general-regime penal colony. The verdict will be announced on August 4 at 4:00 p.m. Alexei Navalny’s final statement: “I very much like a phrase by our compatriot, Professor Lotman, a Doctor of Philology. Speaking to students once, he said: ‘A person is always in an unforeseen situation. And in that moment, he has two legs to stand on: conscience and intellect.’ I think that is a very wise thought. And a person should stand on both of those legs. To rely only on conscience feels intuitively right. But abstract morality, one that takes no account of human nature and the real world, degenerates either into foolishness or into evil, as has happened more than once. But reliance on intellect without conscience—that is precisely what now lies at the foundation of the Russian state. At first, this idea seemed logical to the elites. Using oil, gas, and other resources, we would build a shameless but cunning, modern, rational, ruthless state. We would become richer than the tsars of old. And we have so much oil that the population would get something too. By exploiting a world of contradictions and the vulnerability of democracy, we would become leaders, and we would be respected. And if not, then feared. But what happens is what happens everywhere. Intellect unconstrained by conscience whispers: take it, steal it. If you are stronger, then your interests always matter more than the rights of others. Unwilling to stand on the leg of conscience, my Russia made several great leaps, shoving everyone around it aside, but then it slipped and came crashing down, destroying everything around it. And now it is floundering in a puddle of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with an impoverished, robbed population, while all around lie tens of thousands dead in the stupidest and most senseless war of the 21st century. But sooner or later, of course, it will rise again. And it depends on us what it will stand on in the future.”