Kremlin opponent Navalnyj: "Putin needs all these extreme measures"

Jailed Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalnyj 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 figure wrote in several letters from the prison camp to the American magazine Time. The magazine turned it into a cover story, as it became known on Wednesday. “Rather than ignore this nonsense, the US accepts Putin's agenda and rushes off to organize a few meetings. Just like a frightened schoolboy who was bullied by a high school student,” Navalnyj 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.

Putin's fear of a change of power

In Navalnyj's opinion, Kremlin chief Putin fears not so much NATO in front of Russia's borders, but rather 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 pressure Russia from the outside and his supporters in Russia pressure the Kremlin from the inside.

According to Navalnyj, 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.

Navalnyj 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. "