“Don’t let it happen”: in a film by Canadian Daniel Rohr, which won the 2023 Oscar for best documentary, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalnywho died suddenly today at the age of 47, in prison, was leaving his political will.

Navalny was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok on August 20, 2020, while traveling to Siberia and after intense international pressure was transferred, in a comatose state, to Berlin to recover. His statements were made while he was in Germany.

“My testament, in the event that I am killed, is very simple: don’t let it happen!” he said at the time, at the end of the documentary, which was shown after he returned to Russia and was immediately arrested, on January 17, 2021, at the Moscow airport. “My message is the obvious: don’t let it happen. We mustn’t, we can’t give up,” he repeated in this film, which bore the simple title “Navalni”.

“If this happens (including his murder), it means that at that moment we will be extremely powerful, since they decided to kill me. And we need to take advantage of that power,” he added.

“Don’t give up, remember that we are a gigantic force under the yoke of these gross guys simply because we don’t realize how powerful we are. All it takes to defeat Evil is the passivity of good people. That’s why we shouldn’t remain passive,” Navalny concluded.

From his prison cell, he used every court appearance to speak and get his messages across. When he went on trial for “extremism” in August 2023, he denounced “the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century”, referring to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I know that the gloom will disappear, that we will win, that Russia will become a peaceful, bright and happy country,” he wrote in June 2023.