Aleksei Navalny, Fiery Putin Critic, Given Additional 9-Year Prison Sentence

A Russian courtroom sentenced the imprisoned opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny to 9 years in a high-security jail on Tuesday and ordered him to pay a nice of about $11,500.

The trial was held in a makeshift courtroom on the jail exterior Moscow the place Mr. Navalny has been held for greater than a 12 months.

“Navalny dedicated fraud, that’s, the theft of different folks’s property by way of deceit and breach of belief,” the choose, Margarita Kotova, mentioned in studying her verdict, based on the information company Interfax.

Prosecutors claimed that Mr. Navalny and his former Anti-Corruption Basis — which the Russian authorities banned as extremist final 12 months — had embezzled folks’s donations.

The decision, nonetheless, was extensively seen as a transfer by the Kremlin to maintain Mr. Navalny behind bars past the expiration in 2023 of his present two-and-a-half-year jail time period, ostensibly for violating the phrases of his parole.

For President Vladimir V. Putin, the battle in opposition to Ukraine has made the fiery opposition chief much more of a legal responsibility. Mr. Navalny has been urging Russians, by way of letters from jail that his legal professionals publish to social media, to protest the invasion.

“It’s each individual’s responsibility to struggle in opposition to this battle,” Mr. Navalny mentioned in a courtroom speech final week. The battle, he mentioned, was began by a “group of loopy previous males who don’t perceive something and don’t wish to perceive something.”

Even with Mr. Navalny in jail, his aides exterior Russia have been calling for protests in opposition to the battle and persevering with to publish their trademark corruption investigations on YouTube. On Monday, the group launched a video that provided proof that Mr. Putin was hiding a $700 million yacht at a dock in Italy.

One other video from the group mentioned that in Mr. Navalny’s trial final week, Decide Kotova had obtained a number of telephone calls from a quantity that researchers traced to the top of public relations for the presidential administration.

“The case was completely fabricated by particular folks,” Ivan Zhdanov, the previous head of Mr. Navalny’s basis, says within the video. “This verdict is being written by Putin’s officers.”

Decide Kotova has not commented on the allegations, however she was promoted to a extra senior judicial place final week, the state information company RIA Novosti reported.

Mr. Navalny’s backers generally say that the precise size of his jail time period issues little, as a result of they count on Mr. Putin’s system to break down within the coming years.

However for the second, Mr. Putin has the higher hand. The Kremlin has pressured Mr. Navalny’s community of supporters into exile and, in latest weeks, blocked entry to Instagram and Fb, and cracked down additional on the impartial media — making it ever tougher for Mr. Navalny to speak with the Russian public.

There’s substantial proof that the Russian authorities was accountable for the poisoning that just about killed Mr. Navalny in August 2020, and with the world’s consideration on Ukraine, Mr. Navalny’s supporters concern that his life is at risk once more.

The most recent verdict might permit the Russian authorities to maneuver Mr. Navalny to a higher-security jail farther from Moscow, making it tougher for his legal professionals and household to go to him.

“With out public safety, Aleksei shall be nose to nose with those that have already tried to kill him,” his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, posted on Twitter on Monday. “And nothing will cease them from attempting once more. Subsequently, we at the moment are speaking not solely about Aleksei’s freedom, but additionally about his life.”