The critic of the Kremlin Alexei Navalny announced today via social media that new criminal charges have been brought against him.
Navalny, 47, is already serving sentences totaling more than 30 years in prisonon charges including extremism, which he denies, and has spent most of the last two years in solitary confinement.
In comments made public by associates, Navalny says he is now charged under Article 214 of the criminal code, which covers vandalism.
“I have no idea what Section 214 is and there is nothing to look at to find out. You will find out before me,” he says on his channel on the Telegram platform.
“Every three months they bring a new criminal case against me. Rarely does someone who has been locked up in solitary confinement for more than a year have such a vibrant social and political existence.”
Navalny is by far the best-known figure in Russia’s fragmented opposition. His supporters see him as a Nelson Mandela-like figure who will one day be released from prison to lead the country.
His political movement has been outlawed by authorities and its leaders have been jailed or fled abroad as part of a crackdown on dissent that has intensified since President Vladimir Putin last February sent his armed forces into Ukraine in what Moscow calls it a “special military operation”.
Navalny was convicted in August on new charges related to alleged extremist activity and sentenced to 19 years in prison on top of the 11-1/2 years he was already serving. He rejects all the charges, saying they are politically motivated and aimed at silencing him from criticizing the Kremlin.
Last month, three of his lawyers were placed by the authorities on a list of “terrorists and extremists”, five weeks after they were arrested on suspicion of being part of an “extremist organisation”.
Navalny won worldwide admiration for voluntarily returning in 2021 to Russia from Germany, where he had been treated for a near-fatal attempt to poison himself, according to Western laboratory tests, with a nerve agent in Siberia.
As soon as he arrived in Russia, he was arrested. The Kremlin denies it tried to kill him.
Source: News Beast
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