Navalny sees the reason for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in President Putin’s striving for power. In the fantasies of conquest he sees a kind of diversionary maneuver from domestic political problems. However, the Kremlin critic predicts that Putin’s plans for conquest will fail.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny has described a Russian military defeat in Ukraine as “inevitable”. “The final military defeat can still be delayed at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands of reservists, but ultimately it is inevitable,” Navalny said in a message published by his team on online networks.
The statements of the opposition politician, who has been in prison in Russia for two years, were circulated four days before the first anniversary of the offensive in Ukraine. In it, the 46-year-old explained in detail the reasons for his rejection of the military operation in the neighboring country. “The combination of aggressive war, corruption, incompetence of generals, weak economy, heroism and high motivation of those who defend themselves can only lead to defeat,” Navalny argued. The lives of “tens of thousands of Russian soldiers were senselessly ruined”.
The opposition figure explained that the “real reasons” for the offensive were political and economic problems within Russia and Kremlin chief Vladimir Putin’s efforts “to stay in power at all costs” and to leave behind the legacy of a “conquering tsar”. Navalny lamented that tens of thousands of innocent Ukrainians had been killed.
He also demands that Ukraine’s borders be accepted as they were agreed upon when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 – and that the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014, be recognized as Ukrainian territory. In the past, critics of the Kremlin have repeatedly accused Navalny of supporting the annexation of Crimea.
“We should leave Ukraine in peace and give it the opportunity to develop as its people want,” he wrote, calling for the withdrawal of Russian troops. “Continuing the war is a cry of helplessness, but ending it is a gesture of strength,” he said.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021. He had previously flown back to Russia from Germany, where he had recovered from a poison attack. He was later sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud. He denies the allegations.
