Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny will face nine years in prison after a Moscow court threw out his appeal against a sentence that he and his supporters have condemned as being politically motivated.
The Moscow City Court ruled to "leave the sentence without changes" and for Navalny's nine-year prison sentence to take effect immediately. As a result, Navalny will be transferred to a prison in Russia where he will serve out his sentence after a Russian court found him guilty of embezzlement and contempt of court.
Navalny is a Russian opposition leader, lawyer and anti-corruption activist who has been fiercely critical of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government. Navalny ran in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election and later ran for president in 2018.
Navalny lost the mayoral election to a Putin appointee and he was barred from the presidential election due to a prior criminal conviction, which was widely viewed as a bogus charge from the Russian government to keep him out of politics.
In two separate incidents agents who were found to be connected to the Kremlin attempted to assassinate Navalny. Both attempts to take Navalny's life drew international condemnation, and a poisoning that failed to kill Navalny sparked sanctions against Russia from the U.S., U.K. and EU.
A spokesperson for Navalny wrote on Twitter that the prison Navalny will be spending his sentence in is notorious for prisoners being torture and killed.
1/6 Today, Alexei Navalny's conviction was affirmed. He will have to spend nine years in a maximum-security penal colony. The place where he is to be transferred is notorious for its prisoners being tortured and killed. I wrote about it in detail here: https://t.co/waa5WoOcsa
— Кира Ярмыш (@Kira_Yarmysh) May 24, 2022
