Russian oppositionist Alexei Navalny admitted on the Ekho Moskvy radio that his intention to take part in the presidential campaign, which he has been announcing for a year, was just an “explicitly declared goal,” a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
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“We realized that they didn’t want to let me run in the elections back in 2012, when they filed criminal cases against me and immediately passed a law according to which convicts cannot run for office. We declared that we would try to develop such a level of political pressure that they would be forced to let me run in the elections. Perhaps we developed too much pressure, they were horrified by the scale of our campaign, and this worked against us,” Navalny said.
He also admitted that he did not even follow the progress of the courts, in which his lawyers tried to challenge the decision of the Central Election Commission of the Russian Federation, which refused to register Navalny as a candidate.
“I didn’t go to any court. When there was an appeal, I didn’t even follow it. Our lawyers did an excellent job, but these are people... who in the Soviet years were imprisoned for anti-Soviet activities, I do not have the slightest illusions about the Supreme and Constitutional Courts,” Navalny said.