Dmitri Alperovitch: ‘Navalny Was One of the Few People in Russia Who Had the Potential to Challenge Putin’

RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
KEILAR: “There in Munich. Dmitry, how big of a loss is this and what will Navalny‘s legacy be?”
ALPEROVITCH: “Well, Navalny was one of the few people in Russia who had the potential to challenge Putin, how we shouldn‘t overstate his popularity because it was in low single digits. But of course in part because he was getting very negative press to the extent he was getting any press on Russian television. But he was one of the few who was willing to stay in Russia, come back as clearly that‘s the word said, at great risk to himself, and challenge Putin directly in Russia, many of the other opposition figures have fled to escape and try to save their lives. And there‘s really no one left on the Russian opposition landscape that has his level of popularity, his level of name recognition that could have been a competitor to Putin.”