Vladimir Putin’s fiercest critic has been jailed for 19 more years. Here’s what we know

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Key Points
  • Putin critic Alexei Navalny has 19 years added to jail term.
  • Navalny says charges are politically motivated and bogus.
  • West declares extension to Navalny’s sentence ‘unjust’

Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny had an extra 19 years in a maximum security penal colony added to his jail term in a criminal case which he said afterwards was designed to cow the Russian people into political submission.

Who is Alexei Navalny?

Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s biggest domestic critic, is already serving sentences totalling 11-and-a-half years on fraud and other charges that he says are also bogus. His political movement has been outlawed and declared “extremist”.

A court at his IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km east of Moscow, on Friday, brought to a close his trial on six separate charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organisation.

Navalny, 47, will be 74 years old by the time he’s freed

Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Navalny, now 47, would be 74 years old by the time he gets out of prison in 2050.

Russia: Russian court hears case against Navalny

A screen grab shows Alexei Navalny (second left) and his lawyer Vadim Kobzev (second right) attending the verdict announcement at Penal Colony No 6 in the village of Melekhovo on Friday. 4 August 2023. Source: AAP / TASS/Sipa USA

Navalny said in a statement on social media released via his lawyers and supporters that he was facing a life sentence behind bars unless the current authorities fell first.

“Nineteen years in a maximum security penal colony. The number does not matter. I understand perfectly well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence. Where the life sentence is measured by the length of my life or the length of the life of this regime,” said Navalny.

“The sentencing number is not for me. It’s for you. You, not me, are being frightened and deprived of the will to resist. You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to the gang of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have seized power. (President Vladimir) Putin must not achieve his goal. Do not lose the will to resist.”

State prosecutors had asked for 20 years.

What is Navalny being accused of?

The charges relate to his role in his now-defunct movement inside Russia, which the authorities accused of trying to foment a revolution by seeking to destabilise the socio-political situation.
The US State Department called the verdict “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial”, while the European Union condemned what it called another politically motivated ruling and called for Navalny’s immediate release.

A small group of Navalny supporters had gathered outside the penal colony but were not let in to hear the verdict.

The audio feed from the court, where the trial had been held behind closed doors in the prison’s sports hall, was so poor that it was practically impossible to make out what the judge, Andrei Suvorov, was saying.
Journalists were not let into the courtroom but were able to watch proceedings on CCTV.
Dressed in a dark prison uniform and flanked by his lawyers, Navalny smiled occasionally as he listened to the judge.

The former blogger, lawyer and corruption investigator has cast himself as a political martyr whose aim is to demonstrate to Russians that it is possible to resist Putin, albeit at great cost.

“For a new, free, rich country to be born, it must have parents. Those who want it. Who expect it and who are willing to make sacrifices for its birth,” Navalny said in his closing statement last month.
Putin, 70 and in power since 1999, is expected to run for another six-year presidential term in 2024 saying it is vital for the country to remain united.

Navalny’s supporters cast him as a Russian version of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela who will one day be freed from prison to govern the country.

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