This is grim -- but I think Stas is probably right about this -- the West is not going to really stand up to a nuclear power over one dissident and is preoccupied with its own disarray and COVID; Russians have been very brave in protesting but the power of the state to fire them from jobs, expel them from schools, arrest, and torture them is pretty great; the labor camp system already cripples and even still kills some people and with his health weakened by being poisoned with a chemical weapon, even Navalny, who is pretty robust, may not make it. Worse, his martyrdom or his honour after being assassinated won't change anything just as Boris Nemtsov's didn't.
Merkel, unvaccinated, may step away from the pipeline deal with the Russians, but likely not; remember how the Russians expelled 3 EU ambassadors *before* they met with the EU guy who was completely craven with Putin? Russians are used to eating kasha in Siberia, it's hard to knock them out by stopping their flow of Dutch cheese and even Apple phones -- they have their own "Gollandskiy" and the Chinese will sell them the electronics. What I do is try to translate some of this because I can't do a lot more now.
Facebook post by Stanislav Dmitrievsky, a long-time human rights defender in Nizhny Novgorod.
TRANSLATION [comments by me in brackets]
"Convoyed in an unknown direction" -- very likely to Golgotha [remember that's what we call Calvary, where Jesus was crucified; i.e. already missing while being transferred from isolation investigation prison to a labor colony, standard procedure].
I fear that the life of Alexey Navalny isn't worth a busted penny. He is entirely under the complete power of murderers, who realize that neither Russian society, nor the West, are prepared for decisive responses. I don't see (God hope I'm wrong) not a single restraining factor which could outweigh Putin's wish to bring this to the conclusion already begun.
The Europe Court, with its "interim measures" was demonstratively told to go do something unpleasant to itself -- and the Council of Europe as usual wiped itself and went in the direction indicated by the Kremlin. The protests died out as quickly as they had begun, and the [Russian] liberal intelligentsia now enthusiastically discusses who should get a statue put up in the council, Gog or Magog [hostile countries in the Bible; the reference is to a vote now underway as to whether Alexander Nevsky, Prince of Novgorod and Grand Prince of Kievan Rus', i.e. the historical founder of Russia beloved by nationalists or Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the secret police, whose statue was toppled in the resistance in the 1991 coup, should be honored].
Even Amnesty International unexpectedly undermined, in a rare timely move, its legendary principled nature. Well, go on, tell me, what will Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] now be embarrassed to do or will fear? New sanctions against a dozen killers, who weren't going to travel abroad anyway in a 100 years? [The EU and US have responded to Navalny's sentencing by sanctioning figures like Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee, that is, the Grand Inquisitor, who should have been sanctioned 7 or 10 years ago]. Don't make my novichoks laugh [the poison used to poison Navalny and others]
We can only pray, asking God for a miracle...
Comments