"If you want to influence Putin, influence his personal money": Navalnyi called on Biden to oppose Putin
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For several months, Aleksei Navalny corresponded with TIME journalist Simon Schuster, while in a colony in the Russian Federation.
Yesterday, January 19, the interview was published. In it, the politician spoke about the conditions in prison, criticized US actions, and almost called the sanctions "ineffective." The key statements were as follows:
"Shoebox"
In an interview, the activist said he was in a "prison within a prison"; out of the 13 prisoners living in the same room, only one spoke to him. Aleksei also alleges that he is under psychological pressure and says that he lives "like in a shoebox" because the windows of his barracks are sealed with white paper.
"Putin's Trap"
Navalny called the current situation a trap. Aleksei doesn't believe in the reality of the Russian Federation's attack on Ukraine and says that the heat of the situation on the border with Ukraine is not a provocation, but a sensible move aimed at preventing the United States from imposing sanctions on Russia.
"If you want to influence Putin, influence his personal money"
Such was the reaction to the question of what Navalny would like from the Biden administration. Aleksei blames the US bureaucracy for the fact that sanctions don't affect Kremlin's behavior: "In Russia, we are all tired of rolling our eyes when we see the United States add to the sanctions list some colonels and generals who have no money abroad … If you want to influence Putin, influence his personal money. They are by your side. "
"Russia is in dire need of at least 4-5 cycles of fair elections under the control of an independent judiciary"
Navalny hardly spoke about Russia's future but made it clear that there would be protests and rallies in the streets. And when it came to more distant predictions, Aleksei said that Russia needed several cycles of elections, "to finally break the vicious circle of the revival of authoritarianism and forever determine that the change of power at any level is now happening just like that."
