‘You can’t jail the entire country’
Navalny sentenced to 2 1⁄2 years as Russian protests continue,
MOSCOW—A Moscow court on Tuesday ordered Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to prison for more than 21⁄2 years, finding that he violated the terms of his probation while recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning. The ruling ignited protests in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
Navalny, who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, had denounced the proceedings as a vain attempt by the Kremlin to scare millions of Russians into submission.
After the verdict was announced, protesters converged on areas of central Moscow and gathered on St. Petersburg’s main avenue, Nevsky Prospekt. Helmeted riot police grabbed demonstrators without obvious provocation and put them in police vehicles. The Meduza website showed video of police roughly pulling a passenger and driver out of a taxi.
The ruling came despite massive protests across Russia over the past two weekends and Western calls to free the 44year-old anti-corruption campaigner.
“We reiterate our call for the Russian government to immediately and unconditionally release Mr. Navalny, as well as the hundreds of other Russian citizens wrongfully detained in recent weeks for exercising their rights, including the rights to freedom of expression and of peaceful assembly,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said after the ruling.
The protests lasted until about 1 a.m. About 650 people were arrested, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests.
The prison sentence stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny has rejected as fabricated and politically motivated.
Navalny was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from his fivemonth convalescence in Germany from the attack, which he has blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities deny any involvement. Despite tests by several European labs, Russian authorities said they have no proof he was poisoned.
As the order was read, Navalny smiled and pointed to his wife Yulia in the courtroom and traced the outline of a heart on the glass cage where he was being held. “Everything will be fine,” he told her as guards led him away.
Earlier in the proceedings, Navalny attributed his arrest to Putin’s “fear and hatred,” saying the Russian leader will go down in history as a “poisoner.”
“I have deeply offended him simply by surviving the assassination attempt that he ordered,” he said.
“The aim of this hearing is to scare a great number of people,” Navalny added. “You can’t jail the entire country.”
Russia’s penitentiary service said Navalny violated the probation conditions of his suspended sentence from the 2014 conviction.
It asked the court to turn his 3⁄-year suspended sentence 1
2 into one that he must serve in prison, although about a year he spent under house arrest will be counted as time served.
Navalny emphasized that the European Court of Human Rights ruled that his 2014 conviction was unlawful and Russia paid him compensation in line with the ruling.
Navalny and his lawyers have argued that while he was recovering in Germany from the poisoning, he couldn’t register with Russian authorities in person as required by his probation. He also insisted that his due process rights were crudely violated during his arrest and described his jailing as a travesty of justice.
“I came back to Moscow after I completed the course of treatment,” Navalny said during Tuesday’s hearing. “What else could I have done?”
Observers noted that authorities want Navalny in prison, fearing he could run an efficient campaign against the main Kremlin party, United Russia, in September’s parliamentary election.
“If Navalny remains free, he is absolutely capable of burying the Kremlin’s plans regarding the outcome of the Duma election,” said political analyst Abbas Gallyamov.