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Navalny trial: Putin determined to keep Russia’s opposition leader in prison [1]

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Date: 2023-06

Alexey Navalny, who is rightly called the leader of the Russian opposition, is on trial again.

The new trial has begun in the prison colony where Navalny is currently serving a nine-year sentence. There’s no doubt it will end with an even harsher sentence, perhaps similar to that of Vladimir Kara-Murza, another opposition leader, who received 25 years in prison for ‘treason’ in April, though Navalny says he could receive up to 30 years.

Navalny is accused of seven separate criminal charges, including the setting up of an ‘extremist community’ and its financing, the involvement of minors in criminal activities, and even the rehabilitation of Nazism.

His trial has, understandably, faded into the background after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion. But the chaos of this weekend’s “march on Moscow” has demonstrated that Vladimir Putin cannot be sure of his future. And if Prigozhin has become one of the alternatives to the current government for supporters of the war, then Navalny has long been one of the liberal opponents of the regime.

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I can’t even count how many criminal charges Navalny has faced so far, and I’m the editor-in-chief of a Russian media outlet that covers political trials. I’m not sure that even Navalny could list all the criminal cases he’s had over the years, at least not without the help of Wikipedia.

But today, the authorities are not even trying to prove anything to Russian society. If Navalny used to be prosecuted on fraud and embezzlement charges, then today the investigations clearly relate to his political campaigning.

The current trial is being held completely behind closed doors, and the message is clear: Navalny is an enemy of the Russian authorities.

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[1] Url: https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/alexey-navalny-russia-opposition-leader-new-trial-prison-putin/

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