Alexei Navalny sentenced to nineteen more years in prison: Who is he, why is he in prison

Navalny is currently incarcerated in Penal Colony No 6 at Melekhovo, roughly 240 km east of Moscow. He is serving sentences totalling eleven and a half years for parole violations, fraud and contempt of court – charges he believes are “completely politically motivated.”

Who is Alexei Navalny and how did he get to this point?

Anti-corruption crusader

A former lawyer, Navalny rose to prominence with blogs that exposed what he said was vast corruption in Russia. He says the country is ruled by “crooks and thieves”.

A satellite image shows an overview of Melekhovo prison, in Kolomna, Moscow Oblast, Russia, August 15, 2021. (Maxar Technologies/Handout via REUTERS)

When demonstrations against Putin flared in December 2011, he was one of the first protest leaders arrested. In 2013 he ran for mayor of Moscow and won 27 per cent of the vote despite getting little or no coverage from state media. Since then he has been barred on various grounds from running for office.

Navalny and his team have lampooned Putin and produced slick videos, watched millions of times on YouTube, to expose the opulent lifestyles of Russia’s elite.

“Corruption is the foundation of contemporary Russia, it is the foundation of Mr. Putin’s political power,” Navalny told Reuters in an interview in 2011.

Navalny has long forecast Russia could face seismic political turmoil, including revolution, because he says Putin has built a brittle system of personal rule that is reliant on sycophancy and corruption.

“Please consider and realize that by jailing hundreds, Putin is trying to intimidate millions,” he said on the eve of the verdict in the latest case.

Persecution and poisoning

The Kremlin, however, has dismissed Navalny’s claims about corruption and Putin’s personal wealth. His movement is outlawed and most of his senior allies have fled Russia. Russian officials portray him as an extremist and a puppet of the CIA.

Navalny has been detained countless times for organising public rallies, and prosecuted repeatedly on charges including corruption, embezzlement and fraud.

In August 2020, he fell ill on a flight from Siberia to Moscow. The pilot made an emergency landing, saving his life. Navalny was then flown to Berlin, where he was treated for the effects of a neurotoxin that lab tests in three countries showed to be Novichok, a poison developed in the Soviet Union and commonly used by Russian agencies.

A joint media investigation said it had identified a team of assassins from Russia’s FSB security service. Putin, however, dismissed the investigation as a smear, saying: “If someone had wanted to poison him, they would have finished him off.”

Navalny voluntarily returned to Russia in 2021 and was arrested immediately on arrival.

The latest charges

The latest charges against him were as follows.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny is seen on a screen via a video link from the IK-2 corrective penal colony in Pokrov during a court hearing to consider an appeal against his prison sentence in Moscow, Russia May 24, 2022. (REUTERS/Evgenia Novozhenina/File Photo)

• Creation of an extremist organisation;
• Rehabilitation of Nazism;
• Two counts of public calls for extremism (one at a rally and another online);
• Creation of a non-governmental organisation (Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund) whose activities are alleged to be associated with incitement to commit crimes;
• Involvement of a minor in committing illegal acts (stemming from the fact that people under 18 attended Navalny’s rallies);
• Raising funds to finance extremism.

Navalny says these charges, like all the ones begore, have been fabricated to keep him out of public life and politics. He pleaded not guilty.

(With input from Reuters)