'Ms. Kashtanova said that she had not joined in protests, either during the Soviet era or under Mr. Putin, until this year, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.'<blockquote>'..in a surprise twist, the court had spared Mr. Navalny jail time by suspending his sentence of three and a half years but ordered his younger brother, Oleg, who was also charged, to serve a prison term of the same length.
The imprisonment of Oleg Navalny, who is generally viewed as a pawn in a larger battle, signaled that the Kremlin was adopting a more sophisticated, if crueler, strategy in seeking to suppress Aleksei Navalny’s political activities: sidelining him, but not making a political martyr of him.
..
Outside the courtroom, several dozen supporters of Mr. Navalny said they believed that his brother’s sentence was meant to punish him.
“So they have taken him hostage,” said Vera Kashtanova, a 70-year-old retiree huddled in a heavy fur coat against the morning frost.
Ms. Kashtanova said that she had not joined in protests, either during the Soviet era or under Mr. Putin, until this year, after Russia’s annexation of Crimea.
“I am a Sovok,” she said, using slang that means an old-fashioned Soviet person. “But I am an enlightened Sovok.”
..
In a closing statement during that hearing, Mr. Navalny railed against the judges, prosecutors and other servants of the Putin government, accusing them of knowingly pursuing baseless prosecutions. He expressed particular outrage over the treatment of co-defendants in his cases, including a friend in Kirov, Pyotr Ofitserov, and his brother.
“How many times in his life can a person who has done nothing illegal pronounce his closing words?” Mr. Navalny asked. “In the last year and a half, this is my sixth or 10th closing statement. It’s as if the end of days are coming.”
Mr. Navalny has said that he does not believe opinion polls showing an increase in support for Mr. Putin since the annexation of Crimea. In fact, he has said, even supporters of Mr. Putin are prepared to betray him at the first sign of weakness.
“These people are waiting,” Mr. Navalny said. “The oligarchs, Putin’s ministers and all the others are waiting. They will betray Putin the second they feel like he has weakened. But for now he hasn’t. For now Putin has total authority over Russia.”
- David M. Herszenhorn,
Aleksei Navalny, Putin Critc, Is Arrested at Rally After Suspended Sentence in Fraud Case, December 30, 2014</blockquote>
'..a genuine, anti-criminal revolution. This was a terrible blow for Putin, a hundred times more painful that the Georgian events..'<blockquote>'On Putin’s reaction to Ukraine:
“Out of nowhere, without any warning, boom: suddenly a genuine, anti-criminal revolution. This was a terrible blow for Putin, a hundred times more painful that the Georgian events, than [former president Mikheil] Saakashvili and his anti-corruption reforms. He cannot allow this in Ukraine. So I think one of his strategic goals in the coming years will be to do absolutely everything to undermine the Ukrainian state, to ensure that no reforms work, so that everything ends in failure.” '
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‘Putin is destroying Russia. Why base his regime on corruption?’ asks Navalny, October 17, 2014</blockquote>
Context<blockquote>
'..Ukraine and the West must understand what Putin is doing and call it by its rightful names: invasion, Anschluss, provocation, intimidation, and panic-sowing..''If Russia is to move forward, Pivovarov says, “we must cease to be Soviet people and overcome the Soviet in us.” ''..Europe .. to turn to alternative energy sources for its survival..'</blockquote>