Russia’s most famous opponent, Alexei Navalny, was sentenced on Tuesday to nine years in prison for “fraud” and “contempt of court”. The judge added to this sentence a year and a half of probation and a fine of 1.2 million rubles, or around 10,000 euros at the daily rate, when he has already been imprisoned for more than a year.
He will have to serve his sentence in a “penal colony of severe regime”which means that his conditions of detention will become stricter.
Alexei Navalny faced up to thirteen years in prison, accused of having embezzled millions of rubles in donations paid to his anti-corruption organizations. “Navalny committed a fraud, the theft of property from others by an organized group”had declared earlier in the morning the judge.
The 45-year-old opponent had been on trial since mid-February within the very walls of his penal colony 100 km east of Moscow, prosecutions which he describes as political. He has already been serving a two and a half year sentence for fraud for a little over a year, a case also fabricated according to him.
Navalny’s lawyers arrested in the process
Alexei Navalny promised to continue his fight against the Kremlin and considered that Vladimir Putin had “fear of the truth”in a series of tweets posted just after his nine-year prison sentence. “Putin is afraid of the truth, I have always said that. The fight against censorship, bringing the truth to the people of Russia, remains our priority.he wrote.
The lawyers of the Russian opponent were then arrested in stride in front of the penal colony. Olga Mikhaïlova and Vadim Kobzev were arrested on the grounds, it seems, that they were obstructing traffic in front of the prison by speaking with the press.
Anti-corruption organizations
An activist renowned for his scathing investigations into corruption and the lifestyle of Russian elites, Alexei Navalny survived a serious poisoning in 2020 for which he holds President Vladimir Putin responsible. He was arrested in early 2021, upon his return to Moscow, after a long convalescence in Germany.
Investigators accuse him of embezzling millions of rubles in donations to his anti-corruption organizations and of “contempt of court” during one of his previous hearings.
Russia is engaged in a repressive turn of the screw against all voices criticizing the Kremlin: NGOs, media, political opponents. The extent of this hardening has increased further after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, which in recent weeks has led to the blocking in Russia of the major social networks Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and many Russian and foreign media.
Update : at 2:35 p.m., addition of the reaction of Alexeï Navalny and arrest of the lawyers.