Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is spending his third birthday in prison since his arrest today, has revealed that he has kept morale high despite the tightening of his detention conditions and yet another regime of isolation to which he has been subjected. "For the birthday you have to be honest with yourself and I asked myself this question: do I really have high morale or do I force myself to be like this? My answer is that I really have it," he said in a message, adding that he was in a punishment cell for the sixteenth time. His supporters claim that the authorities are trying to destroy him psychologically by sending him regularly for several days to these cells with drastic living conditions.
"Obviously I wish I wouldn't wake up in this hole, but have breakfast with my family, give my kids a kiss on the cheek, open my presents and say, 'Wow, this is just what I was dreaming of,'" she wrote. "But life is like that: you can only achieve social progress and a better future if a certain number of people are willing to pay a price," he added. But "a day will come when telling the truth and fighting for justice in Russia will become an ordinary and harmless thing. My plan, in the last year, was not to become short-tempered and bitter, to maintain a relaxed attitude, otherwise it would have been the beginning of my defeat," he explained, thanking his supporters and greeting all "political prisoners" in the world.
Alexei Navalny, who turns 47 today, is expected to soon be tried in a new investigation for "extremism" where he faces another 35 years in prison. Jailed since January 2021, upon his return to Russia after recovering from a severe poisoning he attributed to the Kremlin, Navalny believes this new court case is a way to keep him in life detention.