Alexei Navalny expected to die in custody – memoirs reveal details

“I will spend the rest of my life in prison and die here,” Navalny wrote in his diary while in custody in March 2022, according to excerpts published Friday in The New Yorker. “There will be no one to say goodbye,” Navalny wrote.

Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, died on February 16 in a Russian prison camp in the Arctic where he was serving a 19-year prison sentence. Navalny’s supporters and numerous Western politicians blame the Russian leadership and President Vladimir Putin for the death of the opposition figure.

The new book entitled “Patriot” is based on Navalny’s diary entries from prison and the time before. It will be published on October 22nd.

In an entry dated January 17, 2022, Navalny writes: “The only thing we should fear is that we will give up our homeland to let it be plundered by a band of liars, thieves and hypocrites.”

Alexei Navalny had to sit under Putin’s picture for hours

In an entry from July 1, 2022, Navalny summarizes a typical daily routine: waking up at 6 a.m., having breakfast at 6:20 a.m. and starting work at 6:40 a.m. “At work you sit at the sewing machine on a stool below knee height for seven hours,” he explains. “After work, you sit on a wooden bench under a portrait of Putin for a few hours. They call that ‘disciplinary activity’.”

The Kremlin critic began writing his memoirs after a poison attack in 2020, as a result of which he was treated in a hospital in Berlin for several months. The following year, Navalny returned to Russia, where he was arrested and sentenced to 19 years in prison.

The last diary entry pre-published by the New Yorker is from January 17, 2024. In it, Navalny answers questions from fellow inmates and prison guards about why he returned to Russia. “I didn’t want to give up or betray my country. If our beliefs are to mean something, you have to be willing to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.”