Alexei Navalny was not even allowed to leave his prison to be sentenced to nine more years. Instead, he stood in a makeshift courtroom in the penal colony in Pokrov, 100 kilometers east of Moscow – which is considered unusual even in Russia. He had to appear before the judge in a convict’s uniform, and journalists followed the process via video transmission. The connection was often so bad that Navalny’s closing words were only handed down in fragments. “The people in the Kremlin are so afraid of him,” wrote Navalny’s wife Julia at the beginning of the trial in February, “that he will become the first person in Russia to be tried directly in prison.”
On Tuesday, the judge sentenced him to the equivalent of more than 8,000 euros and nine more years under harsh prison conditions, the public prosecutor had demanded 13 years. Navalny is said to have embezzled donations to his political organizations – organizations that have long been banned in Russia as “extremist”. Navalny is also accused of insulting a judge. She had fined him last year for insulting veterans. Since the opposition figure returned to Russia in January 2021, he has been subjected to one criminal case after another. In Germany, he had previously recovered from a life-threatening poison attack, and the Russian police arrested him at passport control.
At the time, he was accused of violating probation conditions from an old case. Navalny had already been sentenced to three and a half years in prison for fraud in 2014, when the European Court of Human Rights declared the process arbitrary. While Navalny was being treated in Germany, he is said to have violated his duty to report to the police in Russia. That’s why the court sent him to a prison camp for two and a half years in January 2021.
A judgment that is almost lost in the news
At that time, tens of thousands of Russians protested for Navalny’s freedom. Now that Navalny has been sentenced to an even longer prison term, the strange trial in the penal camp has almost been drowned out by the news from Ukraine. Almost nobody today dares to criticize the Kremlin and its authorities, regardless of the topic. In addition, most of the independent media that were still reporting in January 2021 have now been blocked or have disappeared entirely, and numerous journalists have left the country. The day before Navalny was sentenced again, Facebook and Instagram were also declared “extremist” in Russia, and many social networks in Russia can only be accessed abroad via VPN lines.
Navalny had repeatedly called on the Russians to protest via Instagram and Twitter, most recently against the war in Ukraine, which Russia officially has to call a “special military operation”. Navalny sees President Vladimir Putin’s attempt to distract from his own political failure in the campaign, as he has often said. “Let’s not become a nation of fearful, silent people,” Navalny’s official account tweeted in early March. “By cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine.”
At that time, the law banning this word in Russia had not yet been signed. In the meantime, only official Russian sources can be quoted when it comes to the “military operation”. Alleged misinformation could result in imprisonment of up to 15 years. “If there is anything in Russia to be proud of at the moment,” Navalny previously wrote, it is the people who were arrested for protesting for peace. There are now more than 15,000, according to the civil rights organization OWD-Info.
Navalny himself has repeatedly called on the Russians not to be afraid since his return from Germany. A few days before the verdict, after the prosecutor had demanded 13 years, the opposition activist wrote on Instagram: “If imprisonment is the price of my human right to say what I think is necessary,” he wrote, “then you can 113 years demand.”
The court had previously called four alleged victims as witnesses who are said to have donated money to Navalny’s organizations. Another witness for the prosecution later told Navalny’s associate Ivan Zhdanov that investigators had pressured him to testify against Navalny. Zhdanov headed Navalny’s anti-corruption fund before it was banned as “extremist.” He has long been in exile.
“Incompatible with the rule of law”
Not only Navalny’s supporters criticize the process as a political staging to make the opposition incapable of action. Chancellor Olaf Scholz met Putin in Moscow in mid-February – on the same day that the new trial in the penal colony began. With Navalny, his stance was “very clear,” Scholz said as he stood next to Putin during the joint press conference. “His conviction is not compatible with the principles of the rule of law.”
As a result of the new verdict, Navalny’s team fears that he could now be classified as a “repeat offender” and transferred to a “high-security prison” with even stricter rules and much further away from Moscow. “It will then be practically impossible to get in and keep in touch with Alexei,” writes his spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch, also in exile, on Twitter. She fears for Navalny’s life after an attempt was made to kill him. Even Yulia Navalnaya was already having difficulties getting to prison for the trial. “Listen, you cowards and scoundrels! I demand that I be admitted to the trial against my husband,” she wrote on Instagram in February – and was then allowed in.
The brutal crackdown on Navalny and his network by the Russian authorities in recent months has been unprecedented. In hindsight, it almost seems like an advance notice of the blatant repression that is now to follow for everyone. Freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly are de facto abolished in Russia. Navalny and several of his associates have been personally on the list of “terrorists and extremists” since January. In February, the authorities forced several Russian media outlets to delete reports on Navalny’s corruption investigations, including TV station Dozhd, radio station Echo Moskvy, internet portals such as Znak.com and Meduza. In the meantime, some of these media no longer exist at all, the pressure on them was too great.
Almost all of Navalny’s team fled Russia, and many other Kremlin critics followed them into exile. Those who stayed, such as Navalny’s local manager Xeniya Fadeyeva in Tomsk, fear going to prison. Fadeyeva, who was elected to Tomsk City Council in 2020, faces up to 12 years in prison for her connection to Navalny.