Russia has sentenced opposition figure Alexei Navalny to an additional 19 years in prison Friday (August 4) for alleged criminal charges he and his supporters said have been trumped up to keep him behind bars and out of politics for even longer.
The charges relate to his role in his now-defunct movement inside Russia, which authorities accused of trying to plan a revolution by seeking to destabilize the country's socio-political situation.
The 47-year-old domestic Vladimir Putin critic is already serving sentences totaling almost 12 years on fraud and other charges he also believed to be false, while his political movement has been outlawed and declared "extremist."
A court set up specifically for his trial at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km east of Moscow has concluded his closed-door trial on six separate charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organization, as reported by Reuters.
While an audio and video feed of the court proceedings has been provided for journalists, the quality was so poor that it was practically impossible to make out what the judge was saying.
Navalny Says He Expects a Long Jail Time
Navalny, a former lawyer, blogger, and corruption investigator, has become the icon of dissent against Putin's regime despite his domestic misfortunes.
In a message posted on social media Thursday (August 3), he said he predicted he would face a long and "Stalinist" prison sentence, but said it hardly mattered as he was also threatened with separate terrorism charges that could bring another decade. Navalny referenced Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, who had imprisoned millions of people who were branded "enemies of the state," the Associated Press reported.
He added that the purpose of giving him extra jail time was to frighten Russians, but he urged them not to be discouraged but to think of the best way to resist what he called the "villains and thieves in the Kremlin."
The European Union has condemned the sentencing as another politically-motivated ruling and called for Navalny's immediate release.
Navalny made headlines in the 2010s when he brought tens of thousands of people into the streets to oppose Putin's rule. At one point, he was poisoned by a Soviet-era nerve agent, which forced him to go to Germany for medical treatment. In 2021, he returned to Russia and was arrested.
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