Article in The Guardian with comments from Alexei Navalny (2013)

Alexei Navalny: 'The Kremlin wants to jail me, but they're scared too' The popular opposition leader tells Miriam Elder about his hopes and Russia's fears ahead of the verdict in his embezzlement case Alexei Navalny is a busy man. He is campaigning to become mayor of Moscow. He is overseeing a dozen young anti-corruption activists uncovering wrongdoing at the highest levels of Russia's government. In his spare time, he tweets and blogs furiously, helping spread his message that it is time to "destroy the feudal system of power" that has taken over the Kremlin. What he is not doing is preparing for what appears to be inevitable. Next Thursday, a judge in the provincial city of Kirov, 500 miles (about 800 km) northeast of Moscow, will decide Navalny's fate. The 37-year-old father of two now faces the very real prospect of becoming the latest — and most high-profile — critic of Vladimir Putin to be sent to prison, as the Russian leader continues an unforgiving campaign to silence those who have dared to rise up against him. The threat of jail has been hanging over Navalny since he first burst onto the scene in the winter of 2010. His investigations into corruption involving everyone from state-run companies to Kremlin-loyal MPs put him in the crosshairs of a government that has never tolerated those who challenge it. "They don't like any phenomena or structures that they cannot control," Navalny said in an interview this week at his busy offices in central Moscow. "[Putin] wants to be president of Russia until his death, to be a kind of emperor for life." Navalny's anti-corruption campaign won him a loyal following, with thousands of Russians donating to his cause. He embraced social media early, gaining hundreds of thousands of followers in order to bypass the state's stranglehold on television and, increasingly, the print media. When Moscow erupted in protest in the winter of 2011, as Putin prepared to return to the presidency amid accusations of voter fraud and creeping tyranny, Navalny became the movement's de facto leader, whipping crowds into a frenzy with fiery speeches calling on the people to take the power that was rightfully theirs. "Everyone was always asking: When will they come [for me]? And now you think: Well, here they are," he said. Russia brought its first charges against Navalny in July 2012, just two months after Putin returned to power in an inauguration accompanied by unprecedented unrest. Riot police clashed with protesters who refused to accept that the man who had ruled Russia since 1999 intended to rule for another six, possibly 12, years. He has now lost count of how many charges he faces and has become the target of endless official harassment. Speaking to the Guardian on Tuesday, he was interrupted by an official from the Investigative Committee, the closest thing Russia has to a political police force, seeking documents about his anti-corruption fund, RosPil. That may soon become a thing of the past. For three months, Navalny, his wife, and his supporters have spent hours traveling by train to and from Kirov to attend hearings in his embezzlement trial. They have sat in a stuffy courtroom and listened to witnesses for both the defense and the prosecution argue in his favor. It seemed that almost everyone in the courtroom agreed that the charges — that he embezzled 16 million rubles' worth of timber (about £330,000 at the time) while advising the liberal governor of the Kirov region, Nikita Belykh, in 2009 — were fabricated. Then last week, the state prosecutor asked Judge Sergei Blinov to sentence Navalny to six years in prison, along with a 1 million ruble fine. Navalny delivers his closing remarks in court in Kirov. That Navalny will be found guilty is widely taken for granted: less than 1% of Russian trials end in acquittal, and Blinov has never issued a not-guilty verdict in his career. At best, he will be found guilty and given a suspended sentence — allowed to remain free but barred by law from taking part in elections, effectively destroying his formal political career before it was ever really allowed to begin. At worst, he will be sent to one of the remote Russian prisons that increasingly hold those who challenge Putin. "This decision will be made personally by Putin," Navalny said. Thousands of Navalny's supporters have vowed to gather outside the Kremlin walls on Thursday to protest a verdict many already expect. No one knows how Russia's notorious riot police will react. Navalny said: "They want to [jail me], but they're scared of it too." Meanwhile, Navalny continues to live as if his life were not hanging in the balance. On Wednesday, accompanied by dozens of supporters, he marched to Moscow's election commission to submit the paperwork allowing him to register as a candidate in the city's September mayoral election. He continues to promote his platform, recruit volunteers, and spread the message that life in the city can change for the better, even though he knows his chances of actually running are close to zero. "For every person, of course, hope dies last," Navalny said. "When you feel completely innocent and know that everyone around you considers you completely innocent, then somewhere deep in your soul you hope that the judge will come out, take up his gavel, and say 'not guilty'," he said. "And something will happen like in American movies, and everyone will start hugging. "But we all understand that this was not started so that everyone would hug like in American movies," he said, in the sarcastic tone full of pop-culture references that has become his trademark. Yevgenia Albats, editor of New Times, Russia's leading opposition magazine, said Navalny has been targeted because the Kremlin fears him. "They understand his potential," she said, calling him "smart, honest, and a little bit populist." His image as the "anti-Putin" has won him many supporters among both liberals who back his anti-Kremlin politics and other Russians drawn to what is at times a worryingly nationalist streak. He appears everywhere with his statuesque wife, Yulia, in stark contrast to Putin, who hid his wife from public view for years before finally announcing their divorce earlier this year. He speaks the language of youth, peppering his anti-Putin speeches with references to the TV show Breaking Bad and posting pictures of cats during dull stretches of his trial. He is now paying the price for that popularity. "Putin wants his period in power to be safe for him, so he wants to control everything that is happening," Navalny said. "For a time he could do that through TV propaganda and through the support of the population that he got thanks to rising living standards. "From 2003 to 2010 there was a lot of talk that Putin was ruling through fear and repression, but it wasn't actually like that. Repression was felt by [jailed oligarch Mikhail] Khodorkovsky and a few other people. In fact, he simply bought everyone off. "Now the money is running out … so now he has turned to repression as a way of governing the country."