Court finds Alexey Navalny guilty of fraud and sentences him to prison 0:43
(CNN) --
Perhaps the most striking element of the CNN film
Navalny
about Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny is his decision to return to Russia, after his poisoning, to face jail or death.
As Navalny faces years in a Russian penal colony and is only able to communicate sporadically with the outside world, his chief of staff and others continue his work, much of it through posts on YouTube.
Alexey Navalny: his life in data
I spoke with Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, about how her work continues, whether she sees herself in Russia, and why the word "political" has a very different meaning there.
Below are excerpts from our conversation, edited for length and clarity.
The term "political" means something different to Russians
WHAT MATTERS:
One notable thing is Navalny's willingness to sacrifice his freedom and security to return to Russia.
That is something that is very strange, I think, to many Americans.
How do you explain this willingness to surrender to Westerners who live in more open societies?
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PEVCHIKH:
Well, "political" means very different things in the Western world than it does in Russia...
The American politicians that we see in the movies or in the culture, or just the real ones, really…sometimes these people sacrifice great business careers to become politicians, to run for Congress, or to be members of Parliament.
So that is what is meant in the West by "politician", a person who has perhaps made a career choice.
Whereas in Russia a politician is like a warrior and a fighter, and a person who doesn't perceive risk or threats at all and all that...
If you want to call yourself a politician in Russia, you can be poisoned with a chemical weapon.
If you want to be a politician in Russia, you can be shot on the bridge just outside the Kremlin, like (Boris) Nemtsov was in 2015.
If you want to be a politician in Russia, you have to be prepared to go to jail and spend your time there.
You have to be prepared for your family to be arrested and sent to jail just for what you do...
This is the price of calling yourself a politician in Russia.
And Alexey is exactly like that...
He knew perfectly well what was going to happen to him when he landed in Moscow... that he would be arrested.
It was a conscious decision, a conscious choice that he made to uphold the principles that he is committed to, to uphold the words that he spoke to the people as a politician, to lead by example.
So I think, I don't know, it's a question of language, and it's two different words for "political" in the Western understanding and in the Russian understanding.
And the Western public will have to accept that this kind of politician exists.
No one is afraid of Alexey Navalny, Kremlin spokesman told CNN
How does Navalny's work continue while he is in prison?
WHAT MATTERS:
With Navalny in prison, tell us how your fight continues.
PEVCHIKH:
We are still working just as hard, probably harder than when he was here, to send a very clear message that jailing Alexey is not going to solve the problem.
They can take it away from us, but that doesn't mean our anti-corruption work stops.
So we're probably doing more than we were before incarceration, and that applies to the... anti-corruption investigations that we do.
And that also applies to our work on YouTube.
We just launched a new YouTube channel with news about the situation in the Ukraine, mainly, and it already has more than a million new subscribers in about six or seven weeks.
So we're trying not only to continue what we did when Alexey was around, but also to broaden the scope of our work.
Where is the Russian protest movement now?
WHAT MATTERS:
Watching the film, I was struck by the sheer number of people showing up on the streets and at the airport to support Navalny.
Are his supporters the same as those we have read protesting against the war in Ukraine?
PEVCHIKH:
I imagine it's more or less the same people.
It is those people, probably the bravest in the country, who are willing to risk their own freedom for a greater cause, for something significant.
The story has changed a lot, because you've seen the huge crowds in the movie and that was probably the last mass protest we saw in Russia.
And those protests were treated with violence.
All those people that you've seen in the movie ended up spending 15, 20, 30 days in detention centers.
And the people who organized those protests, like my colleagues, some of them ended up spending a year on house arrest because of it.
The situation has changed.
I am sure that now the same number of people continue to support the anti-war movement.
But I don't think we'll see them on the streets anymore, because now it's not just 15 days in the detention center.
Now you risk spending 15 years in prison for your anti-war activity.
This is the new law.
The risks for all those willing to protest in the street have increased dramatically, but they continue to do so.
In Russia it has been seen that some very brave people, alone, go to the square and stand there with a sign.
So it's still there.
It's very scary and it's very scary that people are protesting right now.
How can the opposition grow in a repressive regime?
WHAT MATTERS:
Navalny is in prison.
This week we saw another poisoned politician, Vladimir Kara-Murza, return to Russia only to be arrested after speaking on CNN.
How can the opposition movement communicate and grow in these conditions?
PEVCHIKH:
Well, I don't think there is a recipe for it.
The Russian opposition needs to grow and exist despite everything.
I think it's a crisis situation, where whoever has some energy, power and convictions left just has to get everything together and do at least something every day...
I don't think that in this moment of such volatility (Russian President Vladimir) Putin will allow any kind of grassroots protest to arise.
But that doesn't nullify the fact that we have to get through this very dark time the best way we can.
And each one of us, whoever considers himself in the opposition, has to invest this little every day as a small drop in the ocean that theoretically one day should turn into these great collective efforts.
This will end this nightmare.
Jailed Kremlin Critic Alexey Navalny Sentenced to Another 9 Years in Prison After Conviction of Fraud
How does the message get to the Russians?
WHAT MATTERS:
Independent media outlets have essentially shut down in Russia, where protesters are being arrested.
It's hard for us in the West to know what's going on there.
Can you talk to people in Russia?
What do they tell you about life right now?
PEVCHIKH:
(Here he explains that the Anti-Corruption Foundation has accelerated plans to launch a political channel on YouTube and now broadcasts nightly broadcasts about Ukraine that are available in Russia with a virtual private network, or VPN, connection.)
There is definitely a market left by independent media outlets that were shut down.
And we try to fill that void.
And even those media outlets that have been shut down are now rearming a little bit, and I can see them starting their new media outlets from abroad.
So I don't think it's possible to completely shut down independent information.
Those who seek it will find it...
One of the biggest goals of our work is to break down the wall of propaganda... in the hope that every day someone new will watch our show, and that someone new tomorrow will bring one or two friends who will also join and watch it. see... and that ends up becoming something important.
alexey navalny
