More than 1,400 protesters were detained by Russian authorities during rallies supporting Alexei Navalny, a civil monitoring group said yesterday, after the Kremlin’s most prominent critic was jailed for nearly three years amid international condemnation.
The court’s decision on Tuesday to turn a 2014 suspended sentence into real jail time would see the 44-year-old anti-corruption campaigner — who accuses Moscow of poisoning him last year — serve a lengthy prison term.
Britain, France, Germany, the US and the EU denounced the ruling and called for his immediate release, as Moscow accused the West of interfering in its affairs.
Photo: EPA-EFE
By early yesterday, 1,408 people had been detained across Russian cities — mostly in Moscow and St Petersburg — the civil monitoring group OVD-Info said.
Many were detained before Navalny’s sentence.
Navalny’s supporters had earlier called for more demonstrations against the decision after thousands joined nationwide protests against his arrest over the past two weekends.
The case is presenting one of the most serious challenges to the Kremlin in years, with some in the West calling for new sanctions against Russia.
Judge Natalya Repnikova ordered a suspended three-and-a-half-year sentence Navalny received on fraud charges in 2014 to be changed to time in a penal colony, an Agence France-Presse (AFP) journalist at the courthouse said.
He was accused of breaching parole conditions by refusing to check in with prison officials and was arrested when he flew back to Moscow on Jan. 17 from Germany, where he spent months recovering from poisoning.
Navalny said it was impossible to make the appointments while abroad, but the judge said he had skipped meetings prior to the poisoning.
Navalny had spent time under house arrest after the 2014 conviction — which was denounced by the European Court of Human Rights — and Repnikova said that would count as time served.
His lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, said he would now serve about two years and eight months in prison.
His legal team plans to appeal, she said, with Navalny expected to stay in detention in Moscow during that process.
His Anti-Corruption Fund immediately called for a protest in central Moscow.
Hundreds of his supporters marched through the streets and AFP journalists saw police in riot gear detaining dozens across the city center.
Videos released by local media showed officers hitting protesters with batons and chasing them through the streets.
In a fiery courtroom speech ahead of the ruling, Navalny accused Russian President Vladmiri Putin of trying to intimidate his critics.
“They are putting one person behind bars to scare millions,” he said.
He also mocked the Russian leader over allegations the Novichok nerve agent used to poison him had been placed in his underwear, telling the court that Putin “will go down in history as a poisoner of underpants.”
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called for Navalny’s release, warning that Washington and its allies would “hold Russia accountable for failing to uphold the rights of its citizens.”
French President Emmanuel Macron also called for his release, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel labeled the ruling the decision “far removed from any rule of law” and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson called it “pure cowardice.”
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell, due to visit Moscow later this week, said that it “runs counter to Russia’s international commitments on rule of law and fundamental freedoms.”
Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Maria Zakharova described the Western reaction as “disconnected from reality.”
“There is no need to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state,” she added.
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