“Like Scared Schoolboy”
Navalny blames the US for dealing with Putin
01/19/2022 8:53 p.m
For months, NATO has been accusing Russian President Putin of preparing an attack by his troops on Ukraine. His political opponent Navalny is extremely critical of the fact that the West is taking the Kremlin chief’s threatening gestures seriously. He calls for this “nonsense to be ignored”.
Jailed opponent of the Kremlin Alexei Navaly has warned the West against making concessions to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine conflict. The West keeps falling into Putin’s traps, the opposition leader wrote in several letters from the prison camp to “Time” magazine. The magazine turned it into a cover story.
“Instead of ignoring this nonsense, the US accepts Putin’s agenda and runs to organize a few meetings. Just like a frightened schoolboy who was bullied by a high school student,” Navalny explained in the written interview. For months, the United States and NATO have accused Russia of planning an attack on Ukraine. Russia rejects this. There have already been several high-level meetings on Moscow’s demands on the West for binding security guarantees.
In Navalny’s opinion, Kremlin chief Putin fears less NATO in front of Russia’s borders than a change of power. “In order to consolidate the country and the elites, Putin constantly needs all these extreme measures, all these wars – real, virtual, hybrid or just confrontations on the brink of war.” Navalny said that linking the threat of Western sanctions in the event of an invasion of Ukraine is part of Putin’s strategy to avoid becoming the target of personal punitive measures. He suggested that the US pressured the Kremlin from the outside and his supporters in Russia pressured the Kremlin from the inside. In his opinion, this could split the elites around Putin.
The fiercest opponent of the Russian president is serving several years in a prison camp in Pokrov, around 100 kilometers east of Moscow. Navalny was arrested a year ago after being treated for an attack with the chemical warfare agent Novichok at a Moscow airport. In the interview, the 45-year-old expressed his admiration for ex-Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had visited him at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin: “Angela Merkel amazed me with her knowledge of the smallest details, both about my case and about Russia as a whole. “
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