In an exclusive interview, Alexei Navalny’s longtime Jewish chief of staff, Leonid Volkov, opens a window to the man Vladimir Putin is most afraid of, and talks about his own teshuvah process by Navalny’s side

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s return to Moscow last week stunned the world. Just months after surviving a brazen assassination attempt at the hands of the security services, the anti-corruption campaigner flew back home from Berlin on a plane heaving with journalists, directly into the lion’s den.

It was no triumphal home coming. The founder of the “Russia of the Future” party, which has been repeatedly blocked from even registering as a political entity, was still gaunt as a result of his encounter with Novichok, the nerve agent that’s seemingly the weapon of choice for Russia’s official hit men. After his plane was diverted to an airport where a courtroom had been assembled, Navalny was sentenced to jail in a trial that he called “lawless.”

Two weeks after the event, as Western leaders urgently call for his release and thousands take to the streets inside Russia, the questions have only grown.

Cut off from the world in a maximum-security jail, the 44-year-old is at the mercy of a prison system where troublemakers have mysteriously met their end. What is his short-term survival strategy?

Even if his international stature protects him, how can Alexei Navalny’s cause prevail against the powerful security apparatus and governing elite who have closed ranks around leader Vladimir Putin?

Most disturbingly, is the Kremlin justified in claiming that the Yale-educated Navalny is a Western stooge whose human-rights platform remains unpopular with the average Russian, who admires Putin’s strong leadership?

In a candid interview from Vilnius, Lithuania, Navalny’s longtime Jewish chief of staff Leonid Volkov answers those questions and opens a window to one of the most dramatic stories of a drama-filled era.

In the fluent English of an IT entrepreneur, he talks about his own teshuvah process and career by Navalny’s side; the Kremlin attempts to smear Putin’s foe as anti-Semitic; what unites and divides the anti-corruption movement and Sharansky’s struggle, and the character of the man who’s dared to take on Russia’s ruler.

I’m speaking to you from Israel while you’re in what was called the “Jerusalem of Lita,” Vilna. Tell me a bit about yourself, how you got involved in Navalny’s movement and how you ended up living there.

I’ve been living here since August 2019, when I had to leave Russia because of political pressure. I’m 40 years old, born in Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk), which is Russia’s fourth-largest city. I hold a PhD in computer science and was working as a CEO of one of Russia’s most successful tech companies when I got involved in local politics and met Navalny in 2010.

I was impressed that he wasn’t a normal Russian opposition figure, just releasing statements like “I am concerned by President Putin’s actions.” He was focused on the root cause of Russia’s problems, which is corruption.

So we started to work on projects together, and in 2013 he invited me to be his chief of staff in the Moscow mayoral election race. I’ve been working with him ever since.