President Putin will run again in the 2018 election. He wants to be the czar of this new Russian empire that he is rebuilding. I think he is really obsessed with the idea.

Putin has reversed all the liberalizing reforms carried out by his predecessor.

Politics is traditionally a male domain in Russia.

Unfortunately, people expect a Russian opposition politician to be a manic libertarian who thinks the oligarchs are great, who isn't interested in the problems of retirees and who believes the invisible hand of the market will resolve everything.

Putin needs to terrorize his own elite. He is more afraid of those in his own surroundings than any protests; there are people there who are at least as critical as I am because they see up close that the system doesn't work. He wants to silence them.

In Russia an authoritarian leader is running the country. You can't fight Putin with elections because he controls them. That's why demonstrations are the most effective approach. Unfortunately Russia has sunk to this primitive level.

I've always seen my campaigns against corruption as political work of a purer form than what opposition leaders usually do. All they do is hold roundtables and release political statements, which is all well and good. But there are concrete things that need to get done in order to achieve the basic goal of every opposition politician.