You're listening to a podcast from the BBC World Service. This is Hard Talk with me, Stephen Sacker.

Thanks for downloading this edition of the program. I do hope you enjoy it.

My guest today, Leonid Volkov, joins me from Berlin, where he's been at the bedside of his

close friend and political ally, Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader,

apparently poisoned by Novichok nerve agent in August. Mr. Volkov has for several years acted

as Mr. Navalny's chief of staff. He is also a senior figure in the Russia of the future movement

and was an opposition councillor in the Siberian city of Yucaterinburg.

The recent near-death experience of Mr. Navalny is just one more reminder that dissent and opposition come with very real dangers in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The president's authoritarian style has become more pronounced over two decades of rule.

And thanks to carefully engineered constitutional modification,

the Putin era could well last another 16 years.

So is there any prospect of an opposition movement

capable of challenging the Putin supremacy? Well, Leonid Volkov joins me now from Berlin.

Welcome to Hard Talk. Good afternoon.

It's a pleasure to have you on this show. You, of course, are in Berlin because that is where Mr. Navalny is still being treated in hospital.

Give us the very latest information on his condition.

His condition is going better.

He's really understanding everything that's going around and he's able to communicate with the outer world,

as you can see on his Instagram and Twitter.

And he's really doing a remarkable progress.

And we, his friends and the family and the staff are very happy to observe this progress.

And still we have to realize it's a long way to go.

...