Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny attacked Vladimir Putin in a New York Times interview conducted last week, calling him a "pathological liar with megalomania and persecutory delusion" ahead of the upcoming Russian legislative elections in September.
Navalny also criticized Putin's banning of opposition candidates and claimed his party, Russia of the Future, could have easily won a majority of seats in the upcoming elections if they were allowed to participate. Navalny's party was designated as an "extremist organization" by Putin's regime in April.
Alexei Navalny, founder of Russia of the Future and the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was sentenced to 3.5 years in Penal Colony No. 2, a corrective labor colony located in Pokrov, Russia, for parole violations after returning from Germany where he recovered from an assassination attempt.
After claiming he is being treated inhumanely in Pokrov and going on a 24-day hunger strike, protests were organized for Navalny all around the world, including Israel, under the #FreeNavalny banner.
In the interview, Navalny said the prison "specializes in psychological violence."
"They won’t beat you — quite the opposite, with continual provocation, they will put you in a position where you have to beat up somebody else, hit somebody, threaten somebody," Navalny said, according to the NYT. "There are video cameras everywhere, and the administration with great pleasure will open a new criminal case against you on charges of assault, adding a few years to your sentence," he added.
When asked for his thoughts on sanctions from the West, Navalny told the NYT that he calls on world leaders, namely US President Joe Biden, to show "real decisiveness in the fight against corruption."
Navalny said "there is no need" to apply sanctions on Russia, going as far as to criticize the sanctions, claiming they were tailored to avoid all of Putin's "gangster gang" of Russian oligarchs, who he said should be personally targeted by the sanctions, the NYT reported.
"Sanctions, far harsher than now, should be applied on those who rob Russia, make her people poorer and deprive them of a future," he said.
"If we could participate in elections, even without money or information resources, we would defeat Putin’s party, United Russia, right now," Navalny told the paper, when asked if political change in Russia is possible. "Sooner or later, Russia will move on to a democratic, European path of development, simply because that is what the people want."
Navalny concluded by telling the NYT that he urges Russians to vote in the upcoming elections, even if they "increasingly look like a joke." In June, Russian president Putin signed a law banning individuals labeled as "extremists" from running for public offices. Incidentally, the law was signed on the opposition leader's birthday.
The 2021 legislative elections for the Duma, the lower house of the Russian Federal Assembly, will be held on September 19.