A former coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s movement has been sentenced to nine years in prison for “extremism”, the team of the main Russian opponent, severely repressed in Russia for more than two years, said on Monday. Vadim Ostanine, who had headed the office of Alexei Navalny’s team in Barnaul, in the Siberian region of Altai, was notably tried for “participation in an extremist organization”. In June 2021, Alexei Navalny’s organizations were designated “extremist” by Russian justice, exposing his activists to serious legal proceedings and pushing dozens of them to flee abroad to avoid prison.
Staying in Russia, Vadim Ostanine was arrested in December 2021, the same day as four other former officials of Alexei Navalny’s organization who are still in the country. “Vadim Ostanin was tried for legal political work (…) He spoke about corrupt people in the area, helped the inhabitants of the Altai region to force their bureaucrats to work”, indicated Monday the team of the opponent.
“Rats came out of a hole in the ground”
Vadim Ostanine, father of an underage girl, was pressured to sign a confession by investigators, who allegedly promised him in exchange to see his relatives in detention, but he refused to plead guilty, said the movement of Vadim Navalny. In a letter, the latter says he was detained in unsanitary cells in Barnaul. “Rats were coming out of a hole in the floor (the toilet) and roaming around the cell if you didn’t yell at them,” he wrote.
According to Alexeï Navalny’s team, he lost 15 kilos in detention, suffers from back and head pain, and his jailers do not give him all the necessary medication. In mid-June, Lilia Tchanycheva, a former coordinator of Alexei Navalny’s team in Oufa, in the republic of Bashkortostan, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on charges of “extremism”. Sentenced in 2022 to nine years’ imprisonment on charges of “fraud” which he considers fictitious, Alexeï Navalny awaits a new verdict, scheduled for August 4, which could earn him an additional 20 years in prison.