A Russian court convicted imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny on charges of extremism and sentenced him to 19 years in prison on Friday. Navalny is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated.
The new charges are related to the activities of Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and statements by his top associates. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term — all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.
Russian state news agencies said he would serve this new term concurrently with his current sentence on charges of fraud and contempt of court. Navalny's spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh told The Associated Press it's the most likely scenario but that his team has not seen the text of the verdict yet.
The prosecution had demanded a 20-year prison sentence, and Navalny said beforehand that he expected to receive a lengthy term.
He was also sentenced in 2021 to two and a half years in prison for a parole violation. The extremism trial took place behind closed doors in the penal colony east of Moscow where Navalny is imprisoned.
Navalny appeared in the courtroom wearing prison garb and looking gaunt, but with a defiant smile on his face. As the judge read out the verdict, the politician stood alongside his lawyers and his co-defendant with his arms crossed, listening with a serious expression on his face.
It took the judge less than 10 minutes to announce the verdict and the sentence — something that in Russia usually takes hours and even days. The hearing was broadcast to reporters in a separate room, but the judge's speech was barely audible.
Navalny commented on the sentence in a social media post, presumably relayed through his team, saying that “the number doesn’t matter.”
“I understand perfectly that, as many political prisoners, I’m serving a life sentence, which is measured by the length of my life or the length of life of this regime,” Navalny said, urging his supporters “not to lose the will to resist” in the wake of his sentence.
Yarmysh confirmed the verdict to the AP, adding that Navalny was also ordered to pay a fine of 500,000 rubles (about $5,200). She said that Navalny feels optimistic despite the harsh sentence, and “absolutely believes in what he’s doing," adding that “it certainly helps him cope with all that and keep doing what he’s doing."
The U.S. State Department condemned Navalny's new sentence as “an unjust conclusion to an unjust trial” and called for his immediate release.
“For years, the Kremlin has attempted to silence Navalny and prevent his calls for transparency and accountability from reaching the Russian people,” it said. “By conducting this latest trial in secret and limiting his lawyers’ access to purported evidence, Russian authorities illustrated yet again both the baselessness of their case and the lack of due process afforded to those who dare to criticize the regime.”
The 47-year-old Navalny is President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest foe and has exposed official corruption and organized major anti-Kremlin protests. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning to Moscow after recuperating in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.
Navalny’s allies said the extremism charges retroactively criminalized all of the anti-corruption foundation’s activities since its creation in 2011. In 2021, Russian authorities outlawed the foundation and the vast network of Navalny’s offices in Russian regions as extremist organizations, exposing anyone involved to possible prosecution.
U.N. human rights chief Volker Türk said Navalny’s new sentence “raises renewed serious concerns about judicial harassment and instrumentalisation of the court system for political purposes in Russia” and called for his release.
One of Navalny's associates, Daniel Kholodny, stood trial alongside him after being relocated from a different prison. His lawyer told the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper that Kholodny was sentenced to eight years in prison.
Navalny rejected all the charges against him as politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to keep him behind bars for life.
On the eve of the verdict hearing, Navalny released a statement on social media, presumably through his team, in which he said he expected his latest sentence to be “huge … a Stalinist term.” Under the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, millions of people were branded “enemies of the state,” jailed and sometimes executed in what became known as the “Great Terror.”
In his statement, Navalny called on Russians to “personally” resist and encouraged them to support political prisoners, distribute flyers or go to a rally. He told Russians that they could choose a safe way to resist, but he added that “there is shame in doing nothing. It’s shameful to let yourself be intimidated.”
The politician is currently serving his sentence in a maximum-security prison — Penal Colony No. 6 in the town of Melekhovo, about 230 kilometers (more than 140 miles) east of Moscow.
He has spent months in a tiny one-person cell, also called a “punishment cell,” for purported disciplinary violations, such as an alleged failure to button his prison clothes properly, introduce himself appropriately to a guard or to wash his face at a specified time.
Yarmysh said that prison officials once again placed Navalny in the punishment cell right after his closing arguments in late July, and that he was released from it only on Friday for the verdict hearing.
On social media, Navalny's associates urged supporters to come to Melekhovo on Friday to express solidarity with the politician.
About 40 supporters from different Russian cities gathered outside the colony, one of them told the AP in the messaging app Telegram. Yelena, who spoke on condition that her last name was withheld for safety reasons, said the supporters weren't allowed into the colony, but decided to stay outside until the verdict as announced: “People think it's important to be nearby at least like that, for moral support. We will be waiting."
Navalny was ordered to serve the new prison term in a “special regime” penal colony, a term that refers to the Russian prisons with the highest level of security and the harshest inmate restrictions.
It wasn't immediately clear when he would be transferred to such a colony from the Melekhovo prison. Yarmysh said Navalny's lawyers will definitely appeal the verdict, so it will not take effect until the appeal is ruled on.
Russian law stipulates that only men given life sentences or “especially dangerous recidivists" are sent to those types of prisons.
The country has many fewer “special regime” colonies compared to other types of adult prisons, according to state penitentiary service data: 35 colonies for “dangerous recidivists” and six for men imprisoned for life. Maximum-security colonies are the most widespread type, with 251 currently in operation.
Still, Navalny is “always in this optimistic spirit," Yarmysh said. “It seems to me that he is probably the biggest optimist among all of us,” she added. “This happens because Alexei is absolutely convinced in what he's doing and confident that he is right. This, of course, helps him cope with everything and continue doing what he does.”
Associated Press writers Dasha Litvinova in Tallinn, Estonia, and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.
© Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.
42 Comments
sakurasuki
Russia still in denial with existing corruption, if corruption doesn't exist in Russia, those logistics and supply won't fail Russia in Ukraine and Wagner won't complain about supply which they need.
Russia even rely on Wagner then it's own national army.
https://aoav.org.uk/2023/the-corrosion-of-corruption-the-state-of-the-russian-military/
wallace
Putin's opponents are jailed, poisoned, or fall out of windows.
餓死鬼
Very brave man, unlike Putin.
Yrral
Reaping what he sowed,from another Facist,if believe in liberty, equality and justice for all,just for White people like himself
UChosePoorly
Kerch bridge struck again?
TaiwanIsNotChina
Why not give him a million years? Sham justice in a sham country.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Some American you are. No American I know of thinks like this.
Yrral
He did not embrace , Liberty Equality And Justice For All,like MLK, Malcolm X and other civil rights leaders did at the barrel of a gun
2020hindsights
Yrral
What did he do to deserve this?
Yrral
Taiwan,since you were not born in America,you have knowledge of the Black Liberation movement,they fought for the rights of Blacks and Chicanos and the liberation of women and others minorities
Yrral
Because he is a right wing Facist,cut from the same cloth of racist Russian
Martimurano
The UN human rights chief Volker Turk is pathetically feeble in his condemnation - he should be showing genuine fury and anger, from the UN arena headquarters in New York, demanding that the Russian representatives appear there to explain the draconian unjust detention of this courageous believer in freedom of speech.
He should be imploring the people of the free world to organise mass demonstrations every weekend outside the Russian embassies of every capital-city on this planet, to make the largest impact across the media of how the ordinary people can make their voices heard to enable change to take place in Russia, and also to foment revolution against that relentlessly cruel and terrorising dictatorship.
Change must come, but it will take Herculean efforts from millions of people to make it happen.
Blacklabel
oh a government is trying to send a rival to prison simply for trumped up “politically motivated” charges?
good thing that would never be allowed to happen in a “democracy”, right?
Yrral
Martin,how can a person that a racist Facist garner, sympathy only from people that share his racist views
Kuku
You will give a million years to Trump...in your sham country with sham justice. But the project "Navalny" State Department may close.
2020hindsights
Blacklabel
Navalny is already serving a nine-year term on a variety of charges that he says were politically motivated.
Correct. It wouldn't.
Alfie Noakes
Navalny is a USUK intelligence asset, a right-wing, nationalist politician, a representative of the pro-Western Russian oligarchs and a convicted fraudster. He once referred to immigrants in Russia from the Caucasus as “cockroaches” that should be killed.
He's nobody's hero and a convicted criminal but it's hard to see how this sentence extension is anything other than politically motivated, just like the continued detention of the Australian journalist Julian Assange.
The heroic Assange is being slowly tortured to death for exposing American imperialist violence to the world through Wikileaks, while Navalny is supported by exactly the same people who condemn Assange.
stormcrow
That's one brave man!
Yrral
Reaping what you sowed,is sometimes the big payback
Yrral
What did he do,but do his own Facist self end
Blacklabel
So there is no one? perhaps an older gentleman, orangish in color and round in shape , with smallish hands, who is being prosecuted by his own government as a political rival?
with the announced goal of imprisonment?
All this lets say, the USA, the supposed preeminent democracy in our world?
doesnt ring a bell?
lincolnman
Navalny criticizes Putin in the media and gets 19 years behind bars.....
Prigozhin launches a coup against Putin, kills Russian soldiers, shoots down Russian planes, and takes over a Russian city....and he's invited to Putin's Africa Summit...
The whole Wagner mutiny has shown the "Little Emperor had no clothes"....Putin is finished - he can't even lock up a guy that was on his way to Moscow to overthrow him...
How many other of his cronies have watched this and said yes, you too can launch a coup and still get invites to state summits...
Putin is on a countdown to getting tossed out an 8-story window...
TaiwanIsNotChina
That's impressive that the US is doing that without him even in their custody.
You could have just ended with that as the only thing of relevance.
Speed
Kremlin = bad.
Eastman
sayonara boy.
Black dolphin hotel is waiting.
no twitter anymore.
AlternativeOpinion
Its a good day when the right wing nutjobs are crying foul.
TaiwanIsNotChina
The five indictments (maybe more) that will be argued against Trump will be argued in a court of law before a jury of his peers. Nothing to compare with no evidence cases in Russia before a crony judge.
AlternativeOpinion
Do we need anymore proof that the occupied Ukrainian territorial elections were a sham? Putin can't dare to have free and open elections in his own country, no way should anyone accept the results.
Navalny's sacrifice should not be in vain and young Russians should rise up against the criminal Kremlin regime.
Cards fan
To draw a comparison between Navalny repeatedly being tried in sham trials to the prosecution of Trump is luaghably absurd.
That all sounds like exactly like the Putin Regime. This too is laughably absurd. Navalny may not be a "good" guy, but that certainly doesn't make what the fascist Russian government doing here right, either.
TokyoLiving
What a load of tears in the comments..
Well, don’t mess with Russia..
Don't mess with Lord Putin..
TokyoLiving
Lol!!..
Blacklabel
so Trump won’t be tried repeatedly by his government in sham trials where we already know the verdict just because he is a political rival who criticizes his government regime too?
TaiwanIsNotChina
You should look up what happened to lords and ladies in the French Revolution. Russia will have its shot at modernity, too.
Blacklabel
sounds familiar too.
There are many more similarities than there are differences lets just say that.
a sham trial has a predetermined outcome. With evidence hidden from the public, such as under a “gag order”. who just filed for a gag order?
And Don’t you know the outcomes of these trials already?
Blacklabel
But but but we just know the multiple trial outcomes before they even start because “he” is obviously guilty before any evidence is even seen or presented in court.
yeah I can relate, says Navalny.
JJE
Julian Assange is facing 175 years in the can.
wallace
There is no mention of Trump in the article and there can be no comparison between the trial of Navalny and the upcoming trials of Donald Trump.
Trump was charged on the available evidence and will receive a fair trial by his peers. That never happened with Navalny.
Blacklabel
will he now, really?
Cards fan
Do you have any proof to the contrary, or is it just that anything short of finding Trump not guilty is "unfair?" Hilarious.
wallace
If you no longer believe in the American Justice System, then release all the criminals.
JJE
He staged his illness on that airplane (coincidentally filmed by one of his peons).
He is also funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (the CIA).
wallace
Blacklabel
Trump is a citizen and will be judged by a jury of citizens. I believe the jury in Washington will base their judgment on the evidence presented and not on their political views.
Navalny did not have a jury.