Alexei Navalny, the head of the Russian opposition, was found guilty in August on charges relating to extremism, and his sentence was maintained by a Moscow court of appeals at 19 years in jail.
Navalny, a vocal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently serving a nine-year prison term for fraud and embezzlement.
The court declared in August that Navalny had supported and encouraged “extremist activities” through his organisation, the Anti-Corruption Foundation. The organisation was outlawed and designated as extremist by Russian authorities in 2021.
The accusations have been denied by Navalny as politically motivated by the Kremlin in an effort to intimidate him.
This extremism case is contrived, the foundation said in response to Tuesday’s verdict on X (previously Twitter). It has 196 volumes and 3828 pages of sheer gibberish, including blank pages, screenshots from the web, and an omelette recipe.
The appeal was heard behind closed doors because the Interior Ministry of Russia had warned that Navalny’s followers would organise “provocations,” according to Russian state news outlet Tass. From a high security prison colony in the town of Melekhovo, roughly 150 miles east of Moscow, where he is being imprisoned, Navalny made an appearance via video link. Tass announced that he will now be moved to a different maximum security facility.
Tuesday saw the posting of a thread on X in which Navalny (presumably through his associates) detailed the miserable conditions he had to face in jail, including very cold cells and nothing but “monstrous” gruel to eat.
According to The Associated Press, Navalny’s 19-year sentence will take into account time served since his arrest on January 17, 2021. In 2020, he was exposed to a nerve agent and spent months healing in Germany. After returning to Russia, he was promptly detained. He has already been found guilty five times in the past several years.
Additionally, on Tuesday, the appeals court upheld Daniel Kholodniy’s 8-year prison term for working on Navalny’s YouTube channel.
Navalny’s August sentencing was earlier denounced by the U.S. State Department, which referred to it as a “unjust conclusion to an unjust trial” and demanded that Navalny be released.
