Russian Opposition Leader Alexei Navalny Receives Additional 19-Year Jail Sentence

• Alexei Navalny sentenced to an additional 19-year jail term in a remote penal colony.
• Found guilty of founding and financing an extremist organization, Navalny denies charges.
• Navalny’s trial held behind closed doors at a Moscow court conducted remotely in prison.

Alexei Navalny, the incarcerated Russian opposition leader, has been sentenced to an additional 19-year jail term in a trial conducted at a remote penal colony.

He was found guilty of founding and financing an extremist organization and related activities, charges that he vehemently denies. This new sentence comes on top of his existing nine-year prison term for parole violations, fraud, and contempt of court, which is widely seen as politically motivated.

Mr. Navalny has been held at the remote Penal Colony No. 6 in Melekhovo, located 240km east of Moscow, since his imprisonment in 2021. The proceedings for his recent trial were conducted behind closed doors in the prison’s hall. He is now set to serve his time in a maximum-security colony, according to his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.

Russian state prosecutors had sought a 20-year prison sentence for Alexei Navalny, proposing that he serve it in an even more restrictive “special regime colony,” typically reserved for dangerous criminals. Mr. Navalny anticipated a “Stalinist” style prison term to deter other dissenters, as he expressed in a message on social media before the verdict.

The trial officially took place in a Moscow court, but holding it remotely in the prison indicated the Russian authorities’ attempt to avoid the publicity that would accompany transporting Mr. Navalny to the capital for the trial.

Two weeks ago, when Alexei Navalny delivered his final statement, no video or audio recording was allowed, but the text of his speech criticizing the Russian authorities and the war in Ukraine was made public. In a show of support, his followers, including exiled Russian actors and musicians, read out and shared his speech online.

Navalny may still face additional charges, as investigators have warned him of another trial on terrorism charges. For over a decade, he worked to expose corruption within Russian power, with his video investigations garnering millions of views online.

As a charismatic campaigner, Navalny was the primary opposition leader capable of mobilizing large numbers of people across Russia for anti-government protests. However, in 2020, he was poisoned with a nerve agent in Siberia, an attack later attributed to agents of Russia’s FSB internal security service, as revealed by Bellingcat and The Insider.

Despite the risks, Navalny returned to Russia in 2021 after recovering from the poisoning, leading to his immediate arrest upon arrival at Moscow’s Vnukovo airport.