Russian prosecutors have sought to extend opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s prison sentence by a further 13 years, state media reported on Tuesday.
The arch Kremlin critic is currently serving a two-and-a-half year term in a jail east of Moscow on what he says are trumped-up charges designed to diminish his influence.
In a court on Tuesday, prosecutors said they wanted the 45-year-old to face another 13 years behind bars for alleged fraud and contempt of court, according to the TASS news agency.
Leonid Volkov, Mr Navalny’s chief of staff, responded to the development by saying: “Alexei Navalny’s sentence is well known: life in prison. Until one of two people’s lives ends: Navalny’s, or Vladimir Putin’s. If Putin thinks he’ll be there 13 more years, he’s overestimating his own abilities.”
Mr Navalny was first detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport on 17 January last year after flying in from Germany, where he was treated after being poisoned by a nerve agent in Russia. The attempted killing is widely believed to have been ordered by the Russian authorities.
Upon his return to Russia, the leading opposition figure was imprisoned for breaching his parole terms for a fraud conviction he says was politically-motivated. Mr Navalny was in a coma in Germany at the time of the alleged parole breach.
“I don’t regret it for a second,” Mr Navalny said of his return, exactly a year on from his arrest, adding that he hoped to succeed in “pulling over to my side those who are honest and no longer afraid”.
Despite being in prison, Mr Navalny continues to encourage Russians to protest against Vladimir Putin’s regime. Since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine last month, he has urged his fellow citizens to take to the streets to demonstrate against the war.
Taking to social media last week, he said Russia should not be a “nation of frightened cowards” and called Mr Putin “an insane little tsar”.
“I am urging everyone to take to the streets and fight for peace,” he said. “If, to prevent war, we need to fill up the jails and police vans, we will fill up the jails and police vans.”
Thousands of Russians have been detained by security forces for publicly protesting against the invasion. War critics now face up to 15 years in prison after a new law was introduced by the Kremlin to criminalise any narrative which goes against its own.
Marina Ovsyannikova, an editor at the state television Channel One, is among those who has been arrested. On Monday, she made international headlines by interrupting a live news broadcast shouting “Stop the war” and holding a sign which said “They’re lying to you here”.
In a pre-recorded video, she also said: “We were silent in 2014 when this was just beginning. We did not go out to protest when the Kremlin poisoned [opposition leader Alexei] Navalny.”
“We are just silently watching this anti-human regime. And now the whole world has turned away from us and the next 10 generations won’t be able to clean themselves from the shame of this fratricidal war,” she added.
