Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny warned Wednesday he may face life in jail on “terrorist” accusations, while another prominent opposition lawmaker went on trial in Russia’s growing crackdown on dissent.
About a year after Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, independent media has been shut down, and most prominent opposition figures have been imprisoned or exiled.
Navalny’s team claims authorities are planning a massive new trial against Putin’s arch-enemy.
“They have presented bogus allegations against me, according to which I am facing up to 35 years,” Navalny stated, wearing his prison uniform and seeming haggard but resolute. Navalny, 46, was warned he would face “terrorist” accusations in a military trial in the new extremist case.
He threatened life in jail.
Last October, Navalny announced a fresh criminal case against him for “extremism,” “terrorism,” and “rehabilitating the Nazi ideology.”
His team claimed the court gave Navalny until May 5 to peruse the 196 tomes of extremist case documents.
Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, stated a second major trial against the opposition lawmaker will begin “before the end of May.” Yarmysh tweeted, “Mind-boggling,” that he will thereafter face a “terrorist” trial.
She dubbed the new case “mind-boggling” when Navalny was in prison. Navalny, who led enormous Kremlin demonstrations, is serving a nine-year term for theft and other offences. Navalny’s team claims he was harassed and imprisoned in a “punishment cell” for minor offences.
His team said last month that the opposition lawmaker had dropped eight kilos (18 pounds) in two weeks and suspected gradual poisoning. Despite his suffering, Navalny quipped during the Wednesday hearing that he was shocked to see “so many people.”
He joked, “I went a touch savage in the punishment cell.”
The opposition lawmaker accuses the Kremlin of his near-death Novichok poisoning. After returning from Germany, he was detained in January 2021. I’m unafraid Navalny’s friend and former mayor, Yevgeny Roizman, went on trial in Yekaterinburg, 930 kilometres east of Moscow, for undermining the Russian army’s invasion in Ukraine.
The last notable opposition politician in Russia is Roizman. The outspoken lawmaker, who has openly condemned Putin and his attack in Ukraine, faces up to five years in prison.
Roizman, 60, was Yekaterinburg’s opposition mayor for five years, starting in 2013. He’s popular in Yekaterinburg and abroad because he’s tall, athletic, and personable.
After Roizman called Moscow’s offensive in Ukraine “war” on YouTube in August 2022, officials began a criminal inquiry against him. Roizman pleaded not guilty at the trial’s commencement in Yekaterinburg, wearing blue pants and a white T-shirt. The court asked Roizman if he confessed guilt.
“It is evident where this is going,” he told journalists following the session.
May 10 was the trial’s adjournment. Roizman says he doesn’t fear prison. Last year, he told AFP, “I have no illusions.”
“But I’m not afraid.”
Roizman’s admirers love his use of foul language on Twitter to insult officials.
Memorial’s local branch leader, Alexei Mosin, termed the case against him “absurd.”
“They are criticising a man who calls a spade a spade,” he added, adding that “many people” had come to support him.
Roizman became famous as an anti-drug campaigner who combated Russia’s drug pandemic.
He helped the city’s neediest by interacting with them as mayor.
