A post-mortem interview.
Russian opponent Alexeï Navalny, who died in detention in February, declared that his death “would not change anything” in the fight he was leading in Russia and that “several people were ready to replace him”, according to a video never broadcast by an interview with a European elected official in December 2020, published Wednesday exclusively by the French media Libération and LCI.
“I think that if they killed me, it wouldn’t change anything because there are other people who are ready to replace me,” Alexeï Navalny assured in this interview.
“They (his teams) know how to work without me, because in fact I spend a lot of time every year in prison and they are used to working without me.
The organization would endure and continue to function, but of course it would be more difficult psychologically and in terms of motivation” for the teams, he said.
“But there are other people who can lead.
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A fierce critic of Vladimir Putin, Alexeï Navalny died on February 16, 2024 in obscure circumstances in a penal colony in the Arctic, where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence for “extremism”.
He was buried last Friday in Moscow.
His death sparked a wave of condemnation in the West.
Imprisoned in early 2021, a lawyer by training, Alexeï Navalny tirelessly denounced the repression and corruption of Russian elites and criticized, from his cell, the Kremlin's assault on Ukraine.
“Will I be arrested at the airport?
»
On December 17, 2020 in Berlin, one month to the day before his return to Russia and his arrest, Alexeï Navalny met the Frenchman Jacques Maire, then a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.
The European elected official had been appointed as rapporteur in an investigation into the poisoning which had almost cost the life of Alexeï Navalny at the time, with the objective of “legally qualifying the facts” and establishing the responsibility of the Russian authorities , details Libération.
In a statement filmed in a hotel meeting room, Alexeï Navalny returned, in English, to the circumstances of his poisoning in Siberia in the summer of 2020, the role of the secret services in his life since he had decided to running for the Russian presidency and what he thought of Vladimir Putin.
To Jacques Maire's question asking him if he thought he would be arrested on his return, the opponent replied: "It's a question I don't prefer to answer (...) They constantly make threats, they have seized my apartment and my bank accounts (…).
Will I be arrested at the airport?
Or later ?
I've no idea ".
Also read Death of Alexeï Navalny: “Putin killed the best of us”
“There are millions of people who refuse to live in a country where all power is concentrated in the hands of one person,” he said.
At least half of the country wants Russia to be a normal European country but he (Vladimir Putin) wants to do everything to stifle, to repel these kinds of thoughts or political movements.
» This interview is on the front page of the newspaper Libération on Thursday, which headlines “Navalny, the posthumous interview”.