Three lawyers who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to years in a Russian penal colony, as part of Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels unseen since Soviet times.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser – already in custody – have been jailed from three-and-a-half to five years after being arrested in October 2023, charged with involvement with extremist groups, which is what the Russian state designates opposition groups as.
Before his sudden death in a penal colony last year – which Western leaders have blamed Putin for – Mr Navalny slammed the arrests of his lawyers as “outrageous”, describing it as a plan to further isolate him in jail. Despite his imprisonment, Mr Navalny was able via his lawyers to post on social media and file frequent lawsuits over his treatment in prison, using the resulting legal hearings as a chance to keep speaking out against the government and the war.
The trial, which was held behind closed doors, was widely seen as a means to discourage defence lawyers from supporting political dissidents in Russia. The lawyers were accused of enabling him to continue to function as the leader of an “extremist group”, even from behind bars, by passing his messages to the outside world.
Human rights activists say the prosecution of lawyers who defend people speaking out against the authorities and the war in Ukraine crosses a new threshold in the repression of dissent.
"Lawyers cannot be persecuted for their work. Pressure on defence lawyers risks destroying the little that remains of the rule of law, whose appearance the Russian authorities are still trying to maintain," rights group OVD-Info said in a statement.
It said Mr Navalny's lawyers were being prosecuted "only because the letter of the law still matters to them and they did not leave the man alone with the repressive machine".
In court, a woman shouted "Boys, you are heroes" and supporters applauded the three men, standing together in a barred cage for the defendants, after their sentencing.
At the time of their arrest, Mr Navalny was serving sentences totalling more than 30 years on a number of charges, widely rejected by the international community as trumped up. His wife, Yulia Navalnaya has said she believes Putin ordered him killed, and has offered a reward to witnesses with evidence he was murdered. The Kremlin has denied this.
In his final court statement on January 10, Mr Kobsev reportedly said the trio were being “tried for transmitting Navalny’s thoughts to other people”.
Mr Navalny was accused of leading extremist networks after a 2021 court ruling outlawed his Foundation for Fighting Corruption. He was arrested that year upon his return from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning which he blamed on the Kremlin.
The ruling was widely condemned as politically motivated. A request to remove late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny from a list of “terrorists and extremists” was rejected – Ms Navalnaya revealed last week - saying that it shows Putin is still afraid of her husband.
After initially being ordered to serve a 2.5 year prison sentence following his 2021 arrest, Mr Navalny’s prison sentence was extended to 19 years after two more trials. Navalny’s team accused the Kremlin of looking to jail the activist, who died aged 47, for life.
He was moved to a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle, where he died in February in unexplained circumstances. Russian officials have rejected accusations from Mr Navalny’s wife and supporters that he was murdered on direct orders from the Kremlin.
Two other lawyers who assisted Navalny, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov, are wanted by Russia but have left the country. Ms Mikhailova says she has been charged in absentia with extremism.
Russia’s most prominent human rights group, Memorial, has described Mr Kobzev, Mr Liptser and Mr Sergunin as political prisoners. The group has demanded they be released immediately.
