pick up the mantle. he s pulling up his entire opposition movement by the root, at least he s trying to. except there s another element that putin hasn t accounted for. look at this. this was moscow in january of this year, a few days after navalny had returned to russia and got arrested, thousands of russian people took to the streets to protest against navalny being arrested, to protest against putin s corruption, his authoritarian regime. it wasn t just in moscow that this happened. russia is physically the largest country in the world, spans 11 different time zones. there were protests in little pockets all over russia and it created this kind of wave effect all day long of people pouring into the streets. they gathered as far north as siberia, one sub arctic remote village where it was minus 60 degrees that day people turned out in pretty considerable
he thinks the second go-around they mixed the thing with some kind of caustic chemical. and as you can see in this picture, the green stuff got in his eyeball. he started losing sight in that eye and needed surgery to save his eye from a specialist in spain. since he picked up that mantle, as russia s most visible, most vocal, most effective opposition leader, alek knee navalny has been threatened, he s been arrested. he ll been jailed. he s been dyed green twice, he s been almost blinded and of course he was ultimately poisoned. alexei navalny was poisoned with a russian-made nerve agent novichok last year. it almost killed him. put him in a coma, it almost killed him. he recovered in germany and against the advice of everybody who loves him, he said he would return to russia. he did. he returned to russia this year
and was immediately arrested and then almost just as immediately convicted on phony charges and sentenced to two and a half years in a russian penal colony. this year russia has labeled navalny s opposition organization an extremist group and technically that s the same designation that russia gives to isis and al qaeda. not only has putin banned him from standing as a candidate in any russian election, he s banned navalny s whole anti-corruption group from operationing inside russia at all. they re considered to be a terroristic threat, like al qaeda. many of his associates and colleagues have had to flee the country for fear what russia did to navalny will next be done to him. what putin appears to be doing here is that he appears to be learning from what happened after the boris nemtsov assassination in 2015. he s making it so this time there s no next man. there s no next leader. there s no next navalny in this case waiting in the wings to