Russian opposition leader and Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny has been imprisoned for a year but has no regrets. “I did it; I don’t regret it for a second,” Navalny said on social media about his fight against the Kremlin and his return to Russia after recovering from a poison attack in Germany.

“After a year in prison, I tell you what I shouted to those (then supporting me) in court: don’t be afraid,” Navalny said. The publication comes with a photo of Navalny in prison uniform, next to his wife. A year ago, on January 17, 2021, he was arrested in Moscow. He had just returned from Germany, where he was recovering from a poison attack that he barely survived.

The opposition leader was paroled after controversial convictions in an old corruption case. But according to justice, he violated the conditions for his release with the trip to Germany. He is now in a prison camp about 100 kilometres east of Moscow. Navalny appeared in court again on Monday, this time to investigate two complaints he filed against the prison administration.

One of his lieutenants now living in exile, Leonid Volkov, said on social networks that January 17 “will go down in history as the beginning of the end of Putinism”. Russia recently added Volkov and Ivan Zhadanov, another key Navalny associate, to its list of “terrorists and extremists.”