Alexei Navalnythe main face of the internal opposition to Vladimir Putin, saw this Tuesday the Russian court denies appeal that he had brought after being sentenced to nine years in prison for the crimes of fraud and embezzlement, as well as contempt of justice.
With the invalidation of the appeal, Navalny’s candidacy for the next elections in Russia, scheduled for 2024, becomes unviable. Navalny is already serving a two-and-a-half year sentence in a prison near Moscow, for violating parole – after being of having stolen the equivalent of almost five million euros in political donations to campaigns in which he participated.
Navalny, who denies these accusations, was the subject of an attempted poisoning with an agent novichokwhich he survived after a month in a hospital in Germany.
The sentence imposed, however, was lower than that requested by the Public Ministry, which wanted Navalny transferred to a high-security prison for 13 years, not only for the alleged fraud but also for disrespecting the court – accusations that several organizations it did not: government officials have already come to say they have no support and are just a way to silence opposition to Putin.
When Navalny was sentenced, the European Union asked Russia for his immediate release, as the European Court of Human Rights had already ordered in February 2021. In a statement published on the official website of the European Council, the EU also regretted the way in which the trial was held “in a closed environment”, which made it impossible for other international observers to attend and raised doubts about a fair trial. “This is the clearest indication that the Russian legal system continues to be instrumentalized against Navalny,” he read.
Navalny says Putin is an ‘evil madman’ with ‘army, nukes’ and UN veto
In an article published on Monday in the American magazine TIME, after the president of Ukraine was chosen as one of the personalities of the year, Navalny called Vladimir Putin an “evil madman” with nuclear weapons and the right of veto in the UN,
“World leaders have hypocritically talked for years about pragmatism and the advantages of international trade. Thus, they positioned themselves to benefit from Russian oil and gas, while Putin’s dominance became ever greater,” Alexei Navalny emphasized in the article.
The opponent added that now “the question we face is: how to stop an evil madman with an army, nuclear weapons and a member of the UN Security Council?” he asked. “Is [questão] has not yet been answered. And we are the ones who should do it,” she said.
Vladimir Putin “reminded us more than once that the path that begins with ‘a little electoral fraud’ always leads to a dictatorship,” he said, stressing that “dictatorships always lead to war. It’s a lesson we shouldn’t have forgotten.”
Source: Observadora
