Banned From Election, Putin Foe Navalny Pursues Politics By Other Means

All that separates Alexei Navalny's office from the outside world is a long hallway and a door — which police have sawed open twice in the past year to search for imaginary bombs.

The Kremlin's most vocal critic runs his nationwide opposition network from a desk strewn with papers in a cramped corner office of his Anti-Corruption Foundation, housed in a nondescript Moscow business center.

"I want to live in a normal country, and refuse to accept any talk about Russia being doomed to being a bad, poor or servile country," Navalny said in an interview with NPR. "I want to live here, and I can't tolerate the injustice that for many people has become routine."

The 41-year-old lawyer, who once tried to foment shareholder revolts at giant state-run companies, has in less than a decade risen to the forefront of Russia's opposition — and provokes such an allergic reaction with President Vladimir Putin that he won't utter Navalny's name in public. Yet after spending a year crisscrossing the country in a quixotic bid to unseat Putin, Navalny was denied registration as a candidate in the March 18 presidential election.

Now Navalny is calling for an election boycott to protest what he calls a predetermined election, in which Putin is pitted against seven pre-approved candidates who have no intention of winning. - Read More, NPR

Banned From Election, Putin Foe Navalny Pursues Politics By Other Means

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