Kremlin critic
Why Alexei Navalny returned to Russia in 2021
Alexei Navalny was in prison for over three years
© Moscow City Court Press Service / Picture Alliance
At the beginning of 2021, Alexei Navalny was treated in Germany for a poison attack. He then got on a plane to Russia with a woman and was arrested. He never regretted this step.
Navalny’s answer: “I have my country and my faith. And I don’t want to give up the country or my faith.”
In the film “Navalny”, which won an Oscar for best documentary in 2023, Alexei Navalny was asked why he had returned to Russia despite everything. He could have stayed in Germany.
Alexei Navalny spent three years and five months in prison
“I don’t want Putin to be president,” Navalny said in the documentary. “I don’t want killer teams driving around Russia.” With his wife Julija, he took a flight on the “Pobeda” line, Russian for “Victory.” On the way, they watched an episode of The Simpsons, watched by dozens of cameras. These were to be his last hours of freedom.
Until his death in a prison camp, Navalny spent three years and five months in prison, a new period of suffering. “Our friendly concentration camp,” Navalny once wrote about the IK 6 penal colony, located 250 kilometers east of Moscow in the area of the city of Vladimir. The 47-year-old politician became a constant victim of arbitrariness in the lawless area of Russian prisons. He was imprisoned dozens of times – once for leaving a button on his uniform undone. He almost died during a hunger strike.
Nevertheless, a year after his arrest, he addressed his compatriots with a message of encouragement: Although he was arrested immediately upon his arrival, he did not regret his return, he wrote on Instagram at the time. Living life in fear makes no sense. “I don’t regret it for a second and I’m moving on.”