“The reason for all this is the hate and fear of one man living in a bunker,” Alexey Navalny said in his final statement in court yesterday, making a jocular reference to president Vladimir Putin. “I mortally offended him by simply surviving the attempt to kill me, which was done on his orders.”
But what comes next? And what are the prospects of protest mobilisation given that Navalny, their principal public coordinator, is now in prison?
The opposition politician, now headed to prison for two-and-a-half years, also used his platform in the dock to look forward, mentioning his hope that his imprisonment “would not be taken by people as a signal that they should be afraid”.
