Sentence nothing new for Navalny, Kremlin’s most visible domestic foe
Jim Heintz
in Moscow Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was yesterday handed a 15-day jail sentence for his part in a big antigovernment protest in Moscow which buoyed the liberal opposition’s morale a year before a presidential election.
But the sentence is nothing new for the Kremlin’s most visible domestic foe, and is unlikely to be more than a brief interruption of his campaign against what he calls “the party of crooks and thieves”.
He’s repeatedly been jailed, endured a year of house arrest and three convictions that could have brought him significant prison time.
Amid all the detentions, the 40-yearold Navalny has relentlessly pursued corruption investigations that allege the top tier of Russian officials, including Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, have amassed extraordinary wealth, living lives of unparalleled luxury behind their modest public images.
These claims of tainted riches have struck a chord with many Russians. Protests called by Navalny took place in scores of Russian cities on Sunday, the biggest show of defiance in years. How he began Trained as a lawyer, Navalny began his rise to prominence after he bought shares in several state-owned companies in 2008 and then pushed for access to information to which shareholders are legally entitled. His blog critiques attracted such attention that he was made a board member of state airline Aeroflot for a year. Savvy about the internet and social media, he was able to pursue detailed opensource investigations and to disseminate the results widely to increasingly cyber-savvy Russians. First protest wave By 2011, when Russia held a parliamentary election rife with fraud claims, Navalny had become prominent enough to be a galvanising figure in the call for protests. The demonstrations brought tens of thousands into the streets of Moscow and broke out in other cities as well. The size and persistence of the protests — which were held sporadically for months — appeared to take the Kremlin off guard after years of regarding opposition groups as irrelevant, if annoying, minorities.
On the eve of Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for a third term as President in May 2012, police cracked down hard on protesters, sharply increasing penalties for participating in unauthorised demonstrations — up to five years in prison for a third violation. Legal pressure While the opposition staggered, Navalny was hit with complicated and dubious prosecutions for fraud and embezzlement. In one case, he and his brother Oleg were convicted of defrauding clients of a shipping business they had started. Oleg Navalny was sentenced to three-anda-half years in prison, but Alexei’s sentence was suspended — a move that critics said resembled Soviet-era tactics of intimidating dissidents by imprisoning their relatives. Political future Navalny has declared himself a candidate for next year’s presidential election, in which Putin is expected to seek a fourth term. He is opening campaign offices throughout the country, expanding on experience he learned in a 2012 run for Moscow mayor — in which he came an unexpected second. While campaigning in the Siberian city of Barnaul last week, an assailant doused Navalny’s face with a bright green antiseptic liquid. Navalny used the indignity to unleash his sharp-edged humour, saying that he now looked like The Hulk. — AP