The repression of opponents is in full swing in Russia, a year and a half after the start of the offensive in Ukraine. Vladimir Putin’s main opponent Alexei Navalny, who is already serving a nine-year sentence in deleterious conditions, is awaiting a new conviction on Friday August 4, this time for “extremism”, a crime for which the prosecution requested 20 years.
Almost all major opponents have been thrown into prison or driven into exile. Thousands of ordinary citizens have also been prosecuted, in particular for having denounced the conflict, some receiving heavy sentences. A longtime opponent of the Russian president, Alexei Navalny saw justice hounded against him before the conflict in Ukraine, but his fate has worsened since.
He was imprisoned on his return to Russia, at the beginning of 2021, after surviving in extremis a poisoning which he attributes to the Russian security services acting on the orders of the master of the Kremlin, then he was sentenced twice. His latest trial for “extremism” is being held behind closed doors at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, 250 kilometers east of Moscow. Sentenced in June 2022 in a case of fraud which he describes as political revenge, the 47-year-old activist is already serving a nine-year prison sentence there.
Alexei Navalny, regularly placed in solitary confinement and facing health problems, said on Thursday he expected a “long, Stalinist sentence”. “The formula to calculate it is simple: what the prosecutor asked for, minus 10-15%. They asked for 20, they’ll give 18 or something,” he said in an internet post from his relatives.
Alexei Navalny, who notably made a name for himself with his investigations into the corruption of Vladimir Putin’s system and the demonstrations he initiated, is accused of having created an “extremist organization”. His Anti-Corruption Fund (FBK) was effectively banned in 2021 for “extremism”.
From his prison, the opponent has also turned into a fierce critic of the conflict wanted by the Kremlin in Ukraine. During his trial, he thus mocked the “tens of thousands of dead in the most stupid and senseless war of the 21st century”. “Sooner or later (Russia) will rise again. And it is up to us to know what it will build on in the future,” he added.
The Kremlin presents the opponent as a simple criminal, ensuring that the proceedings against him have nothing to do with politics. Alexeï Navalny recounts on the networks, thanks to messages sent by his lawyers, his prison life and denounces, often with irony, the harassment he suffers there. He was thus sent 17 times to a disciplinary cell, where he was forced to listen to speeches by Vladimir Putin.
It is in one of these cells, where he is currently, that he awaits his verdict, punished by 13 days of solitary confinement for having “badly presented” to his guards, explained his lawyer Vadim Kobzev on Twitter, renamed X. The conditions of detention of Alexei Navalny could also worsen further after the verdict on Friday.
Indeed, the prosecution calls for his transfer to a “special regime” penal colony, the most sinisterly reputable prisons in Russia, usually reserved for the most dangerous criminals and lifers. Alexei Navalny’s legal marathon also risks not stopping there. He says he is also being prosecuted for a “terrorism” case in another proceeding, few details of which are known at this stage, but for which he faces life in prison.
