A Moscow court granted a prosecutor’s request for Russian President Vladimir Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny to be jailed for three-and-a-half years for violating the conditions of a suspended sentence.
Judge Natalya Repnikova ordered a suspension on Tuesday. The Yale-educated 44-year-old lawyer is banned from state television and was blocked from challenging Putin in the 2018 presidential election, but he has still managed to be a persistent thorn in the authorities’ side.
He has been in detention since returning to Russia last month. He had been treated in Germany for a near-fatal nerve agent attack against him in August. In court he called President Vladimir Putin a “poisoner”, blaming him for the attack.
Thousands of supporters have rallied across Russia in support of Mr Navalny. His suspended sentence for embezzlement has been converted into a jail term. He has already served a year under house arrest which will be deducted from the total.
His supporters called for an immediate protest and tried to gather outside court but the whole area was overrun with riot police. More than 300 have been detained.
Strong international reaction to the sentence came quickly, with the Council of Europe saying the judgement “defied all credibility”. UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab described the ruling as “perverse”, and US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he was deeply concerned by it.
