MOSCOW (AP) – Alexei Navalny is in bare feet, dressed in blue jeans and a checkered shirt, as he opens the door to his apartment in a drab Soviet-era block.
Two years ago, Navalny was the charismatic driving force behind massive anti-government protests in Moscow. Now he wears a monitoring bracelet on his ankle and is not allowed to step over the threshold of his own home – under house arrest in the small apartment he shares with his wife and two children.
Even in confinement, Navalny vowed in an interview with The Associated Press to continue fighting President Vladimir Putin’s regime: “The opposition has to be a moral one,” Navalny said, “calling the bad things bad,”
Following violent street protests in neighboring Ukraine, Putin launched a fierce attack against the Russian opposition this year, barring key opponents from running in local elections and putting Navalny and several of his allies under investigation or driving them into exile. With Putin’s approval rating at an all-time high, the very survival of the protest movement is at stake. But Navalny views this crackdown as a mere setback in his campaign to advance democracy and the rule of law in Russia.
Still the firebrand orator with magnetic blue eyes has found himself muzzled. He was forbidden from speaking to the media when confined to his home in February, a ban that was only lifted in August. And the 38-year-old corporate lawyer is still not allowed to use the telephone or go online. His wife, Yulia, acts as his personal secretary, corresponding on his behalf and briefing him on what is published on the Internet.