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In fact, Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Foundation that served as the umbrella organization for his activities, mainly focused on investigating vast public graft in Russia and on demanding free, democratic elections.
The Kremlin has effectively crushed Navalny and his supporters. In June 2021, Russian authorities banned three Navalny-linked organizations, including the Anti-Corruption Foundation and his political network, branding them as “extremist” in a move strongly condemned by Amnesty International and other global human rights organizations.
In Navalny’s trial on extremism charges, Russia’s highly politicized justice system reached a new low — a closed trial in a closed prison inaccessible to the public.
Even at Friday’s sentencing, there was uncertainty about exactly what the judge said.
The trial was held in an unidentified room in Penal Colony Number 6 in the Vladimir region. News media and even Navalny’s parents were barred from attending, except for 86 minutes on the first day when they were not allowed in the courtroom but watched a video link with barely intelligible sound. A similar video link with poor quality was used for the sentencing on Friday.
At the start of the extremism case, the prosecutor, Nadezhda Tikhonova, demanded the trial be closed claiming there was a “security threat,” although it was not made clear what the threat was. Then, the video screen abruptly went blank and court officials later announced that the judge had closed the hearing.
Navalny survived a poisoning attack in August 2020 carried out, according to the U.S. State Department, by Russian security agents.
In March, “Navalny,” a film about how Navalny and his team unmasked the Russian operatives responsible for the poisoning, won the Oscar for best documentary feature.
After recovering at a hospital in Germany, Navalny in January 2021 returned to Moscow where he was imprisoned for more than two years on alleged probation violations. Last year, he was convicted of fraud charges and sentenced to an additional nine years. Navalny has denied all wrongdoing, describing the charges as political. The European Court of Human Rights also found that he was wrongfully prosecuted.
In his final statement to the court during his most recent trial, Navalny said all Russians knew that a person facing a court was “completely defenseless,” without hope of justice. He described a Kafkaesque scene with 18 people in the court, including the judge, prosecutor, his lawyers and seven guards with their faces covered in black masks. The speech was released by his team.
In a statement on the eve of Friday’s sentence, released by his team on Thursday, Navalny said, “It’s going to be a long sentence. What’s called a ‘Stalinist’ sentence.” He said another case being prepared against him — on terrorism charges — would potentially add another decade — though current law may limit his imprisonment to 30 years.
“Its main purpose is to intimidate. You, not me. I’ll even say this: you personally, who are reading these lines,” he said, addressing Russian citizens.
Navalny said the case was being ignored on state television because to the average citizen, a hefty sentence for “extremism” in a case without victims and consequences “will seem obviously unfair to him, and he will secretly sympathize.”
“And you already know everything. You need to be stunned, intimidated. To knock the thoughts of opposition out of your head with the severity of the sentence. Please, think and realize that by imprisoning hundreds, Putin is trying to intimidate millions,” Navalny said.
In a heartfelt appeal to Russians, Navalny urged them to think about what they could do personally to resist, and “to stop the scoundrels and thieves in the Kremlin” from destroying the country and people’s futures.
“There is no shame in choosing the safest way to oppose. There is shame in doing nothing,” Navalny said. “It’s shameful to let yourself be intimidated. Whatever sentence they have planned, it won’t achieve its goal if you understand what it’s all about and answer, ‘I’m not afraid,’ with a daily coldblooded, albeit small, contribution to the fight for freedom in Russia.”
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