Russian Activist Navalny Sentenced to More Than 2 Years in Prison
A Moscow court found that President Vladimir Putin’s loudest critic
violated his parole. “You cannot lock up the whole country,” Aleksei A.
Navalny told the court after large protests in support of him recently.
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Aleksei A. Navalny at a court hearing in Moscow on Tuesday.
Aleksei A. Navalny at a court hearing in Moscow on
Tuesday.Credit...Moscow City Court, via Reuters
Anton Troianovski <https://www.nytimes.com/by/anton-troianovski>
ByAnton Troianovski <https://www.nytimes.com/by/anton-troianovski>
* NYT, Feb. 2, 2021Updated6:32 p.m. ET
MOSCOW — A Russian court sentenced Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most
prominent opposition leader, to more than two years in prison on
Tuesday, a decision likely to send him for a lengthy term in a far-flung
penal colony for the first time.
Tuesday’s sentencing represented a pivotal moment for President Vladimir
V. Putin’s Russia. Mr. Navalny, one of the main challengers of the
Kremlin, has inspired some of the biggest street protests of the Putin
era and repeatedly embarrassed the president and his close allies with
investigative reports about corruption that were viewed many millions of
times on YouTube.
The authorities previously tried to contain him with short jail terms of
a few weeks to avoid making Mr. Navalny into a political martyr. In
August, Western officials say, Russian agents tried to assassinate Mr.
Navalny by poisoning him. Now, the decision to send him to prison
removes his direct voice from Russia’s political landscape, but it could
energize his supporters and further rally Russian opposition to Mr.
Putin around the figure of Mr. Navalny.
“Hundreds of thousands cannot be locked up,” Mr. Navalny said during the
hearing before he was sentenced. “More and more people will recognize
this. And when they recognize this — and that moment will come — all of
this will fall apart, because you cannot lock up the whole country.”
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Mr. Navalny, 44, may seek to appeal the ruling, which held that he
repeatedly violated parole by failing to report properly to the
authorities in person — in some cases while he was in Germany recovering
from being poisoned, and in others because he did so on the wrong day of
the week. But the Russian authorities have signaled that they will not
be swayed by public pressure to release Mr. Navalny. They have put
several of his top allies under house arrest, and on Tuesday night they
deployed a huge riot police force in the streets of Moscow to quell
angry protests over Mr. Navalny’s sentencing.
ImageSupporters of Mr. Navalny in Moscow on Sunday.
Supporters of Mr. Navalny in Moscow on Sunday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev
for The New York Times
Toward the end of the hearing, Mr. Navalny delivered a fiery speech to
the courtroom in which he blamed Mr. Putin for trying to lock him away.
He said the Russian president was angry that Mr. Navalny had survived
after being poisoned with the military-grade nerve agent Novichok in
August, in what he and Western officials havedescribed as a state
assassination attempt
<https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/russia-navalny-poisoning-putin.html>.
Mr. Navalny has accused Russia’s domestic intelligence agency of trying
to kill him on orders from Mr. Putin by applying Novichok to the
opposition leader’s underwear. The Kremlin has denied involvement in the
poisoning.
“His main resentment against me now is that he will go down in history
as a poisoner,” Mr. Navalny said of Mr. Putin. “There was Alexander the
Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we’ll have Vladimir the Poisoner of
Underpants.”
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Hundreds of riot police officers in body armor descended on central
Moscow Tuesday evening, forming a menacing human cordon that blocked
access to Red Square and other spaces near the Kremlin. Despite the show
of force, hundreds of people spilled into the streets, with chants like
“Let him go!” and “Putin is a thief!”
At least 679 people were arrested, the OVD-Info activist group said.
Video footage showed police officers beating some protesters viciously
with their batons.
“This is lawlessness,” said Daniil Styukov, a 19-year-old warehouse
worker who came to protest. “It’s clear that those in power do whatever
they want, caring nothing for any limits.”
The court ruled in favor of the prosecution’s accusation that Mr.
Navalny had violated parole on a three-and-a-half-year suspended prison
sentence that he received in 2014. He and his brother were convicted of
stealing about $500,000 from two companies, a conviction that the
European Court of Human Rightscalled “arbitrary and manifestly
unreasonable.”
<https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/15/world/europe/aleksei-navalny-european-court.html>
THE MORNING:Make sense of the day’s news and ideas. David Leonhardt and
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The judge, Natalia Repnikova, accepted the prosecution’s request to
convert Mr. Navalny’s suspended sentence to a real prison term. About
nine months’ house arrest served by Mr. Navalny related to the case will
be subtracted from the sentence, meaning that he was effectively
sentenced to just over two-and-a-half years in prison.
Under the terms of his earlier sentence, the authorities say Mr. Navalny
was supposed to check in with the prison authorities at least twice a
month. But prosecutors charge that he repeatedly failed to do so last
year, including after being released from a Berlin hospital in September
while recovering from his poisoning.
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“Despite the preventive and explanatory measures taken with Navalny, he
repeatedly failed to appear at the inspection for registration for
unacceptable reasons,” Ms. Repnikova, said in her ruling, accepting the
prosecution’s contention that Mr. Navalny did not fulfill the terms of
his parole.
Image
Police officers outside a Moscow subway station checked passersby and
possible supporters of Mr. Navalny on Tuesday.
Police officers outside a Moscow subway station checked passersby and
possible supporters of Mr. Navalny on Tuesday.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev
for The New York Times
The ruling brought swift international condemnation. The Council of
Europe, a human-rights body that counts Russia as a member, said it
“defies all credibility and contravenes Russia’s international human
rights obligations.” Secretary of State Antony Blinkensaid
<https://twitter.com/SecBlinken/status/1356665053492219904>the United
States was “deeply concerned” and called for Mr. Navalny’s “immediate
and unconditional release.” President Emmanuel Macron of Francesaid
<https://twitter.com/EmmanuelMacron/status/1356676542257102853>imprisoning
Mr. Navalny was “unacceptable” because “political disagreement is never
a crime.”
Mr. Navalny’s associates have said that only street protests can force
the Kremlin to change course, andtens of thousands of people have
rallied for Mr. Navalny
<https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/30/world/europe/russia-protests-navalny-putin.html>each
of the last two weekends in cities across Russia.
Leonid Volkov, a top aide, said on Facebook that Mr. Navalny’s group
would continue to organize protests, investigate corruption, and support
Kremlin critics in elections. “We know that everything is only
beginning,” Mr. Volkov wrote. “We’re in a moment of enormous moral
superiority. The whole country saw how Putin is afraid.”
Early in the hearing, Mr. Navalny — confined to a glass box for
defendants, as is typical in Russia — smiled often and maintained his
sense of humor.
When Ms. Repnikova asked for his current address, he deadpanned:
“Pretrial Detention Facility No. 1.”
Mr. Navalny, in slacks and a dark hoodie, at times paced back and forth
in his box. Before the judge read her ruling, he used both hands to
flash a heart sign to his wife Yulia Navalnaya, seated in the front row
of the visitors’ area.
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Mr. Navalny sparred repeatedly with the prosecutor, Yekaterina Frolova,
calling her “an honorable daughter of the regime,” but then adding, “You
lie in every word.” He said he was being prosecuted to scare millions of
other Russians out of rising up against Mr. Putin.
The choreography of the hearing appeared designed to portray due process
being granted to Mr. Navalny. Officials moved the hearing from a
courtroom outside Moscow to a bigger one in the city — in order, they
said, to allow more journalists to be present.
Two sculpted judicial scales flanked the Russian double-headed eagle
above the robed judge, Ms. Repnikova, who peppered the prosecution with
pointed questions, probing its arguments. Mr. Navalny was allowed to
give his speech, and criticize the judge and prosecutor, with few
interruptions. Journalists were barred from filming the proceedings or
taking pictures — until television cameras were brought in to record Ms.
Repnikova reading the verdict.
The prosecution’s case for sending Mr. Navalny to prison relied heavily
on technicalities. A prison service official, Aleksandr Yermolin, read
in a soft voice from a stack of papers detailing Mr. Navalny’s alleged
parole violations. The prosecution said the violations had begun before
Mr. Navalny’s poisoning last August.
Mr. Navalny and his lawyers, in a lengthy back-and-forth with the
prosecution, insisted that they had properly notified parole officials
of his inability to report in person because of his poisoning. Mr.
Navalny noted that even Mr. Putin had publicly referred last year to Mr.
Navalny’s being in treatment in Germany.
Mr. Navalny was confined to house arrest for much of 2014 and served
repeated jail terms of several weeks at a time. Until now, though, he
has never served a lengthy prison sentence.
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Analysts say the Kremlin’s calculus has long been that Mr. Navalny could
be more of a liability behind bars — as Russia’s most prominent
political prisoner — than walking free as an often-controversial
opposition activist.
That thinking appears to have changed as the Russian public’s
frustration with Mr. Putin has increased, along with Mr. Navalny’s
prominence.
Image
In anticipation of protests on Tuesday, riot police officers cordoned
off the neighborhood surrounding the Moscow courthouse where Mr.
Navalny’s hearing was held.
In anticipation of protests on Tuesday, riot police officers cordoned
off the neighborhood surrounding the Moscow courthouse where Mr.
Navalny’s hearing was held.Credit...Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times
After his poisoning, Mr. Navalny was airlifted in a coma to Berlin,
where he recovered. He returned to Moscow last month, even though the
Russian authorities made it clear that he would face years in prison.
He was jailed upon arrival, after which his team released a report by
Mr. Navalny that described a purported secret palace built for Mr.
Putin.The report <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAnwilMncI>has been
viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube, energized the pro-Navalny
protests and underscored the opposition leader’s ability to reach a huge
audience on Russia’s mostly free internet.
The Kremlin on Tuesday again sought to minimize the significance of Mr.
Navalny’s case, issuing a veiled warning to the European Union’s top
foreign policy official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, who plans to visit
Moscow this week.
“We hope that there will not be something as silly as tying the future
of Russian-European relations to the case of this pretrial detention
center inhabitant,” the Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov said,
according to the Tass state news agency.
Ivan Nechepurenkocontributed reporting.
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