39His grandson Gabrielius Landsbergis is
now the nation’s Foreign Minister. Be-
tween talks with NATO allies in January,
he told me Lithuania is honored to offer
a “safe space” for Navalny’s organiza-
tion to envision a Russia beyond Putin.
That Russia could be many years
away. Under Russian law, Putin can stay
in power at least until 2036, thanks to
a constitutional amendment enacted
last year. But if the West wants political
change in Russia, Navalny writes, “We
do not by any means have to wait for
Putin’s physical death.” State repression
could spark an uprising. Sanctions could
instigate a palace coup. At times his
letters seem almost impatient for Putin’s
Russia to degrade into an absolute
dictatorship, because that would raise
the risk of regime collapse, Navalny
writes, “when the pendulum swings in
the other direction.”
There is no telling when that could
happen, or how much blood would
be spilled in the process. Yet here was
Russia’s most famous dissident, once
poisoned and now imprisoned, daring
the state to do its worst. The paradox
helps explain why Navalny decided to
return. In exile he would be just an-
other gadfly, too easy for Putin to ig-
nore. In prison he is a reminder of what
Russia has become, and a symbol of
the freedoms that it lost.
Near the end of our correspondence,
I asked Navalny about his regrets. Isn’t
Putin better off with him in prison and
his movement in exile? “He made things
worse for himself,” Navalny replied. “It’s
clear that this was a personal, emotional
decision on Putin’s part. First I didn’t die
from the poison. Then I didn’t turn into
a vegetable as the doctors had feared.
Then I had the gall not only to returnbut, once in Russia, to release an inves-
tigation about Putin’s own corruption.”
If Russia has changed, Navalny
has not. His statements still crackle
with the same irreverent humor. His
foundation remains determined to
embarrass the Kremlin and investigate
its secrets. “He’s the same,” his wife
told me after visiting him in prison last
November. “What he’s been through
in the last year, it would be enough to
break a normal person. But not him.
He’s not giving up. Not for a second.”
—With reporting by LesLie Dickstein
and simmone shah/new York; and
nik popLi/washington △
At their TV studio in
Vilnius, Navalny’s allies
film investigations that are
broadcast into Russia