“It turns out that dealing with a political opponent who has no access to television and no political party merely requires trying to kill him with a chemical weapon. So, of course, he’s losing his mind over this. Because everyone was convinced that he’s just a bureaucrat who was accidentally appointed to his position. He’s never participated in any debates or campaigned in an election. Murder is the only way he knows how to fight. He’ll go down in history as nothing but a poisoner. We all remember Alexander the Liberator [Alexander II] and Yaroslav the Wise [Yaroslav I]. Well, now we’ll have Vladimir the Underpants Poisoner.” Alexei Navalny, just sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in Russia for surviving Putin’s murder attempt, is not softening his message. Here’s the Russian dissident’s statement as he faced imprisonment.

+ “For once, the Kremlin’s propaganda onslaught may be no match for the truth coming from the other side. More than a hundred and six million people have watched Navalny’s movie about the palace; according to Volkov, sixty-two per cent of the views have been within Russia. Millions saw Navalny get arrested, on live TV, when he flew home to Moscow after undergoing treatment in Germany following the assassination attempt. Millions watched a speech that Navalny gave in court by video, from jail; in it, he enumerated the legal violations committed in the course of his arrest, and concluded, ‘You can handcuff me, but this cannot last forever.'” Masha Gessen in The New Yorker: Across Russia, Pro-Navalny Demonstrations Continue to Build Momentum.