It is the evening before he would be poisoned, the evening before the star of the Russian opposition would be transformed into a hospital patient, and Alexei Navalny is in excellent form. He is making an appearance in the university town of Tomsk, located in western Siberia, and his local supporters have asked him a question that he has had to answer so many times before: How is it possible that he's still alive?
It's the last stop on Navalny's long trip through western Siberia, which began in Novosibirsk, but now Russia's most famous opposition politician has made his way to the smaller city of Tomsk, a city that hasn't benefited much from the region's oil wealth.