3 February 2021, Moscow, Russia
Navalny gives his closing statement.
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room: It’s about putting me in jail because of a trial that was ruled to be unlawful. ... We know why this is happening. The reason: The hatred and fear of one man in a bunker. Because I offended him by surviving after they tried to kill me on his orders,” he says, using a term he frequently uses to refer to Putin.
No matter how much [Putin] tries to pose as a geopolitician, his main resentment toward me is that he will go down in history as a poisoner. There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we’ll have Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants. The police are guarding me and half of Moscow is cordoned off because we have shown that he is demanding to steal underwear from opponents and smear them with chemical weapons.
We have 20 million people below the poverty line; tens of millions live without the slightest prospects for the future. Life in Moscow is more or less fine, but if you drive 100 kilometers away it's full of poverty. The whole country lives in this poverty, and [the government is] trying to shut them up with such show trials.
It's easy to lock me up. The main thing in this process is to intimidate a huge number of people, this is how it works. They are putting one person behind bars to scare millions,” Navalny says. “I really hope that this process will be perceived as... a sign of weakness. ... You can't put millions and hundreds of thousands in jail — and I hope people will begin to realize that. Once they do — and this moment will come — you won't be able to jail everyone.