A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced Aleksei A. Navalny to nine years in a maximum-security prison, giving the imprisoned opposition leader a new sentence at a time when the war in Ukraine has made him even more of a liability to President Vladimir V. Putin.
Prosecutors had alleged that Mr. Navalny, a ruthless critic and frequent target of Mr. Putin, and Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation — banned as extremist by Russian authorities last year — had embezzled donations from supporters.
“Navalny committed fraud, that is, the theft of other people’s property through deception and breach of trust,” said the judge, Margarita Kotova, as she read her verdict, according to the Interfax news agency.
Navalny has been the subject of a long-running campaign of intimidation and intimidation by the Russian authorities, and the fraud case was widely seen by the Kremlin as a move to keep him behind bars after the expiration in 2023 of his current two-year prison term. of six months, allegedly for violating the terms of his parole.
It was also a way of increasing Navalny’s personal hardship and isolation, with the new sentence paving the way for him to be transferred to a more remote, higher-security prison, making it more difficult for his lawyers and family to visit him. .
The latest trial took place in a makeshift courtroom in a prison outside Moscow, where Navalny has been held for more than a year. Following the conviction, two of his lawyers were arrested by police and driven away in a police car after going outside to talk to journalists, according to news reports, before being later released.
A member of Mr Navalny’s legal team who was not present at the sentencing said his aides expected the prosecutor’s office, which had originally requested a 13-year term, to appeal the ruling. It was not immediately clear whether Navalny would be allowed to serve his current term and the new one simultaneously.
Navalny, who was also ordered to pay 1.2 million rubles, about $11,500, expressed his opposition after the verdict was announced, saying the Anti-Corruption Foundation he founded in 2011 would expand its activities outside of Russia. He encouraged others to continue fighting.
“The best support for me and other political prisoners is not sympathy and kind words, but actions,” said a commentary attributed to mr. Navalny on his Twitter account† “Any activity against Putin’s deceitful and thieving regime. Any opposition to these war criminals.”
he too referred to a popular phrase on serving a prison sentence from the TV show “The Wire”: “’You only do two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out ‘I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it, given the extremist printed.’
Navalny’s original prison sentence has not put him to rest, and the war in Ukraine has only caused him more headaches for the Russian government. He has urged Russians, through letters from prison that his lawyers post on social media, to protest the invasion.
“It is everyone’s duty to fight this war,” Navalny said in a courtroom speech last week. The war, he said, was started by a “group of crazy old men who understand nothing and want to understand nothing.”
Even with Mr. Navalny in prison, his aides outside of Russia have called for protests against the war and continue to publish their investigations into trademark corruption on YouTube. On Monday, the group released a video that offered evidence that Mr Putin was hiding a $700 million yacht in a dock in Italy.
Another video from the group said that during the Navalny trial last week, Judge Kotova received multiple calls from a number that investigators traced to the presidential administration’s head of public relations.
“The case was completely made up by specific people,” Ivan Zhdanov, a supporter and former head of Mr Navalny’s foundation, said in the video. “This verdict is being written by Putin’s officials.”
Judge Kotova has not commented on the allegations, but she was promoted to a senior judicial position last week, state news agency RIA Novosti reported.
Mr. Navalny’s financiers sometimes say the exact length of his prison sentence matters little, as they expect Mr. Putin’s system to collapse in the coming years. Leonid Volkov, Mr. Navalny’s professed chief of staff, said on Twitter that the government’s expectation that Mr. Navalny would serve for nine years was “the same overestimation of their strength as the one that led them to war and economic disaster.”
But for now, Mr Putin has the upper hand. The Kremlin has the network of supporters of Mr. Forced into exile, Navalny has in recent weeks blocked access to Instagram and Facebook and further cracked down on the independent media, making it difficult for Mr. Navalny is becoming increasingly difficult to communicate with the Russian public.
There is substantial evidence that the Russian government was responsible for the poisoning that nearly killed Mr Navalny in August 2020, and with the world’s attention on Ukraine, Mr Navalny’s supporters fear that his life is in danger again.
“Without public protection, Aleksei will come face to face with those who have already tried to kill him,” said his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh. posted on Twitter on Monday. “And nothing will stop them from trying again. That is why we are now talking not only about Aleksei’s freedom, but also about his life.”
The sentencing of Mr. Navalny came on Tuesday amid further crackdowns on free speech in Russia. The country’s Supreme Court rejected an appeal to stop the liquidation of Memorial, a major human rights organization that documented political repression in the Soviet Union after it was designated a “foreign agent” in December.
And the Russian parliament has amended an existing “anti-counterfeiting” law to make it more drastic. The new language prohibits the dissemination of false information or the discrediting of activities carried out by the Russian government abroad. The original version of the law referred only to military agencies.