Russia: Alexei Navalny faces 30 more years in prison
Kirill Buketov
June 18, 2023
On Monday, the Moscow City Court will start examining a new case against Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. There are seven charges against him, including "extremism."
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is currently in a penal colony in Russia's Vladimir region Image: Vladimir Kondrashov/AP/picture alliance
Advertisement
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is accused of "extremism" and a number of other crimes according to Russia's Criminal Code, which was amended in 2022.
The trial will take place at the penal colony in the Vladimir region east of Moscow where the opposition figure is already serving a nine-year sentence for fraud and contempt of court.
Navalny himself has said that he faces up to 30 years in prison on the new charges. His associates also fear a harsh verdict. "We assume that the trial will be over relatively quickly, and Alexei will really be sentenced to an unimaginable prison term of around 30 years," Navalny's spokesperson Kira Yarmysh said.
Navalny is on trial for the first time for political activities
Another ally, Leonid Volkov, also believes that a severe verdict is inevitable but highlighted that the new case was different because of its exclusively political character.
"For the first time, Navalny is being tried for his political activity under the article pertaining to politics," he said on DW's Russian-language podcast Novosti Show.
"Before, the Kremlin tried to say: 'Yes, he's just a swindler — he stole the whole forest, all the mail, all the donations, just a thief.' So, they tried to make these as demonstrative as possible. Navalny's new case is purely political, he is simply being tried for all his political activities, which the Kremlin has retroactively declared extremist since 2011," Volkov said.
Spokesperson Yarmysh told DW that Navalny's supporters consider "all the possible verdicts to be unlawful and this whole case to be entirely fabricated."
"So, of course we will do our best to let the whole world know about it, including carrying out protest actions," she said.
Closed hearing without journalists
According to Yarmysh, Russian authorities want to conduct the trial as quietly as possible due to "lack of evidence" and had tried to hide it from the public. The preliminary hearing was postponed from May 31 to June 6 and then the location of the trial was changed from the Moscow City Court to the penal colony in Vladimir.
On June 5, Volkov predicted that the trial would not be public: "The trial will be as closed as possible. We will only be told the verdict. The Kremlin will do everything to ensure that no information leaks out."
There are 196 files in the new case against Navalny. The anti-corruption activist is accused of violating seven articles of the criminal code at the same time. The charges include the organization of an extremist community (his Anti-Corruption Foundation was declared an "extremist organization" on June 9, 2021), public calls for extremism, the rehabilitation of Nazism and involving minors in life-threatening activities (calls for rallies).
Advertisement
ECHR supports Navalny
On the day of the preliminary hearing in Russia, the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg announced its decision on the lawsuit, which Navalny's lawyers filed in August 2020 regarding the refusal of the Russian authorities to investigate his poisoning the same year. The court sided with the plaintiff and found that the European Convention on Human Rights had been violated. It ordered Russia to pay Alexei Navalny €40,000 ($44,000) in damages. The sum of €300,000 that had been demanded was considered excessive.
It will likely be impossible to get this money from the Russian authorities. Russia, which is no longer in the Council of Europe and not a party to the Convention, does not recognize the court's decisions.
Yarmysh believes that the decision is important nonetheless. "It means that the court has recognized that Alexei [Navalny]'s life was indeed in danger and the Russian Federation is to blame. It is, therefore, clear that this is an important decision purely from the point of view of justice and it proves that our lawyers were right despite all the Russian courts' refusals to examine these cases."
Moreover, as a Council of Europe representative told DW, it means that the court can consider complaints filed by Russians if these pertain to violations of the rights of Russian citizens that took place before mid-September 2022.
That is when Russia ceased to be a party to the European Convention on Human Rights — six months after it announced its withdrawal from the Council of Europe.
Who is Alexei Navalny?
Alexei Navalny is one of Russia's most prominent opposition leaders, having spearheaded protests against Russian President Vladimir Putin. He has been imprisoned in Russia since 2021.
Image: Imago Images/Itar-Tass/S. Fadeichev
Face of Russia's opposition
The lawyer-turned-political campaigner has been among the most prominent figures of Russia's opposition to President Vladimir Putin. Navalny came to prominence in 2008, when his blog exposing malpractice in Russian politics and among the country's major state-owned companies came to public attention. Revelations published on his blog even led to resignations, a rarity in Russian politics.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/TASS/V. Sharifulin
Disputed parliamentary elections
In 2011 Navalny was arrested for the first time. He ended up spending 15 days in prison for his role at a rally outside the State Duma in Moscow. A recent parliamentary election victory for Putin's United Russia had been marred by instances of ballot stuffing, reported by demonstrators on social media. Upon his release, Navalny pledged to continue the protest movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/A. Stenin
Second jail term
After being reelected president in 2012, Putin ordered Russia's Investigative Committee to launch a criminal inquiry into Navalny's past. The following year the campaigner was charged and sentenced again, this time for five years, for alleged embezzlement in the city of Kirov. However, he was released the following day pending affirmation from a higher court. The sentence was later suspended.
Image: Reuters
Anti-Kremlin platform grows
Despite being embroiled in legal troubles, Navalny was allowed to run in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election. A second-place finish behind Putin ally Sergei Sobyanin was seen as an overwhelming success and galvanized the Russian opposition movement.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa
Navalny takes to social media
His anti-Kremlin rhetoric led Navalny to be banned from appearing on Russian state-owned television. That forced him to deliver his political message over social media and his blog. His talent for public speaking, punchy use of language and humorous mockery of Putin and his loyalists mobilized a legion of young followers.
Image: Alexei Navalny/Youtube
Presidential ambitions
In December 2016, the opposition leader announced the formal start of his campaign to run for the Russian presidency in March 2018. However, repeated accusations of corruption, which his supporters say are politically motivated, ultimately barred him from running for public office.
Image: Getty Images/AFP/K. Kudryavtsev
Moscow's biggest protests in 6 years
In February 2017, anti-corruption rallies across dozens of Russian cities led to the arrests of over 1,000 demonstrators, including Navalny. The protests, believed to have been the largest in the Russian capital since 2012, were spurred by a report published by Navalny linking Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev to a property empire valued at billions of euros. Navalny was released 15 days later.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/Evgeny Feldman for Alexey Navalny's campaign
Physically assaulted
Navalny was assaulted and hospitalized in April 2017 after being hit in the eye with a chemical green dye. The attack permanently damaged his right cornea. Navalny accused Russian authorities of stopping him from seeking medical treatment abroad due to the embezzlement conviction against him. He was eventually permitted by the Kremlin human rights council to travel to Spain for eye surgery.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/E. Feldman
Repeated arrests
In 2018, Navalny was jailed for 30 days. After his release in September, he faced another 20-day stint. In April 2019, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Russia had violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest for most of 2014 during the Kirov embezzlement case.
Image: Reuters/M. Shemetov
Alleged poisoning
In July 2019, only weeks after being released from a 10-day jail sentence, Navalny was again jailed for 30 days for violating Russia's strict protest laws. The opposition leader accused Russia of poisoning him with an allergic agent while in jail.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/navalny.com
Raids and frozen assets
Using YouTube and social media, Navalny had amassed a following of millions by late December 2019. Then police raided his Anti-Corruption Foundation headquarters (pictured), detaining him in the process. His staff said officials wanted to confiscate their tech equipment. Just a few months later, in March, Navalny reported that his bank accounts and those of his family members had been frozen.
Image: Reuters/FBK Handout
A plane — and a coma
On August 20, Navalny's spokesperson announced the activist became violently ill during a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing, and Navalny was rushed to a hospital in Russia's Omsk and later evacuated to Berlin's Charite clinic (pictured). Doctors said he was in a coma. Navalny's associates claimed he had been poisoned and pointed to previous attacks on the activist.
Image: Reuters/C. Mang
Back from the brink
Navalny was taken out of the coma less than three weeks later and was said to be responsive. Not long afterwards, he was posting on Instagram, saying he was slowly regaining strength following weeks of only being "technically alive." The German government said labs in France and Sweden both confirmed that Navalny had been poisoned with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.
Navalny had promised to return to Russia and he did so, despite warnings that he would be arrested. He was taken into police custody shortly after arriving in Moscow. The dissident had said he was "not afraid of anything." He was ordered to spend two years and eight months in a penal colony for violating terms of his probation while recovering in Germany from his poisoning.
Image: Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP/Getty Images
Further charges and years behind bars
Since being imprisoned in 2021, Navalny has faced even more charges and trials: in 2022, he was sentenced to an additional nine-year term for embezzlement and contempt of court, charges his supporters say are fabricated. Appearing via video from prison during a court hearing this spring, Navalny said he was now being charged with new alleged crimes that would further extend his time in prison.
Image: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo/picture alliance