FLASHBACK: Navalny Told CNN’s Amanpour Why He Had to Go Back to Resist Putin, Despite Knowing ‘He’s Killing People’

After news broke on Friday that Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny had died in a brutal Siberian prison, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour shared a December 2020 interview in which she asked Navalny why he was willing to risk his life to return to Russia and speak out against Vladimir Putin.

“Why do you want to go back? And I guess, do you think you’ll be safe when you go back?” Amanpour asked.

“Well, I don’t, think that I can have such a privilege being safe in Russia, but I have to go back because I don’t want these, you know, groups of killers [to] exist in Russia,” Navalny replied, adding:

I don’t want Putin be ruling Russia. I don’t want him being president. I don’t want him being Czar of Russia because, well, he’s killing people.

He’s the reason why our whole country is degrading. He’s a reason why people are so poor. We have a 25 million people living below the poverty line and the whole degradation of system. Unfortunately for me, including system of assassination of people, he’s the reason of that. And, I want to go back and try to change it.

Navalny was poisoned while in Siberia in August of 2020. Poison has long been a favored assassination tool of Putin, a former KGB agent.

“I am totally sure that Putin was aware,” Navalny told Amanpour of his poisoning during the same interview.

“The operation of such skill and for such a long time cannot exist without a ruling from the chief of (Russian Security Service) FSB, Mr. Bortnikov. And he would never dare it without the direct order of President Putin,” Navalny added.

Watch the clip above via CNN.