A Russian court docket on Friday handed Aleksei A. Navalny, the jailed opposition campaigner, a brand new 19-year sentence on costs of supporting “extremism” and ordered him imprisoned underneath the harshest circumstances. The sentence demonstrated the widening scope of repression underneath President Vladimir V. Putin and threatened to additional isolate his most slicing home critic.
Mr. Navalny was already serving a 9-year sentence east of Moscow on fraud costs when Russian authorities added extra circumstances in opposition to him, in what his supporters have characterised as a savage marketing campaign to banish him from Russia’s public sphere and erode his well being in confinement.
In the case that ended Friday, Mr. Navalny, 47, was sentenced for creating an extremist group and different crimes, and was ordered imprisoned in one among Russia’s “special regime” colonies, recognized for his or her harsh remedy of inmates. His supporters have warned that confinement in that setting for such an extended sentence represents a big risk to his life.
The new 19-year sentence might be served concurrently to Mr. Navalny’s current sentences, based on his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh. Mr. Navalny has mentioned that he quickly may obtain one more sentence, of 10 years, on a separate terrorism cost that Russian authorities have introduced in opposition to him throughout his imprisonment.
“The number doesn’t matter,” Mr. Navalny mentioned in an announcement after the sentence was handed down. “I understand very well that, like many political prisoners, I am serving a life sentence. Where life is measured by the duration of my life or the life span of this regime.”
In his assertion, Mr. Navalny urged his followers not to surrender, warning that Russian authorities had been taking these draconian actions to frighten them and deprive them of the need to withstand. The liberal Russian opposition has been fractured, despatched into exile and challenged by infighting because of Mr. Putin’s elevated repression.
“You are being forced to surrender your Russia without a fight to a band of traitors, thieves and scoundrels who have seized power,” Mr. Navalny mentioned. “Putin should not achieve his goals. Don’t lose the will to resist.”
Earlier this summer time, Mr. Navalny had remarked in a social media publish in regards to the absurdity of the mercenary boss Yevgeny V. Prigozhin going free after he led an aborted mutiny in opposition to the Russian protection management, whilst Mr. Navalny himself confronted the prospect of a extreme sentence for “extremism.”
The sentence was met with condemnation in Washington and different Western capitals, now dwelling to many supporters of Mr. Navalny, a lot of whom started leaving Russia even earlier than Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“The United States strongly condemns Russia’s conviction of opposition leader Aleksey Navalny on politically motivated charges,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken mentioned in an announcement. “The Kremlin cannot silence the truth. Navalny should be released.”
Mr. Navalny initially rose to prominence in Russia as a blogger finishing up investigations that uncovered the nation’s corrupt elite.
In the aftermath of parliamentary elections in 2011, he rocketed to international fame, main an enormous avenue protest motion in opposition to what he referred to as the “crooks and thieves” accountable for Russia, rising as a charismatic speaker and a transparent risk to Mr. Putin’s rule.
For a time frame, he and his supporters had been allowed to function in Russia.
Though Russian tv channels wouldn’t put him on air and Mr. Putin refused to say him by identify, Mr. Navalny amassed 1000’s of younger followers, notably in Moscow and St. Petersburg. He mounted a bid for Moscow mayor in 2013, incomes practically a 3rd of the vote in Russia’s greatest metropolis regardless of being barred from state media and hampered in different methods.
But when he tried to run for president in 2018, he was formally barred from turning into a candidate. He was poisoned in 2020 throughout a go to to Siberia, a sign that he and his supporters can be prevented from working in Russia as a marketing campaign of repression dramatically intensified.
Mr. Navalny practically died after being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent, an episode that he and Western officers have described as an assassination try by the Kremlin. The Russian authorities has denied involvement.
While receiving medical remedy in Germany, he informed the German publication Der Spiegel that he “would not give Putin the gift of not retuning to Russia,” saying he had no want to be an opposition determine in exile. He returned the next 12 months to Russia, the place ready safety forces detained him.
His group, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was subsequently outlawed — declared an “extremist” outfit — and the Russian authorities started to crack down much more severely on its actions.
Two of Mr. Navalny’s associates had been sentenced in mid-July to jail phrases of seven and a half years and two and a half years for taking part within the group. At least 15 activists who labored with Mr. Navalny face related costs, based on Ms. Yarmysh.
Many members of the group have gone into exile, the place they’ve continued its work, publishing investigations into high-ranking Russian officers, together with Defense Minister Sergei K. Shoigu and Mr. Prigozhin, the founding father of the Wagner mercenary group.
Friday’s listening to represented the newest Kafka-esque episode within the Russian opposition campaigner’s persecution.
Mr. Navalny, skinny and wearing a jail uniform, filed right into a makeshift courtroom arrange on the grounds of the penal colony, the place the trial had been held in closed-door hearings.
He was surrounded by his attorneys and his co-defendant, Daniel Kholodny, a technician who as soon as helped run Mr. Navalny’s YouTube channel and who obtained an eight-year sentence in a regular jail.
Journalists who arrived on the proceedings weren’t allowed into the makeshift courtroom and as a substitute had been ushered right into a separate room to listen to a dwell translation of the choose’s resolution.
But the sound was of such poor high quality that many of the journalists left with out having been in a position to hear the sentence, and even Mr. Navalny’s workforce exterior the courtroom struggled to know what was occurring.
His mother and father tried to attend the proceedings however had been denied entry, based on Mr. Navalny’s group, which mentioned that his mother and father haven’t seen their son for greater than a 12 months.
Acquittals are extraordinarily uncommon in Russian courts, particularly in opposition to opposition figures. Mr. Navalny and his supporters had predicted a harsh sentence, particularly provided that the Kremlin has banned criticism of its struggle in Ukraine, stepped up its jailing of opposition voices and shuttered impartial information media retailers.
Before the struggle, a two-decade sentence for what is basically dissent would have been unusually harsh. But the ruling was the newest in a string of maximum judgments, which have grown extra widespread since Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
In April, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a dissident with Russian and British citizenship and a contributor to The Washington Post, was sentenced to 25 years in jail for treason, spreading “fake” data and taking part in an “undesirable organization.” Mr. Kara-Murza lost an appeal of the ruling this week.
Alina Lobzina and Aaron Boxerman contributed reporting.
