Russian President Vladimir Putin's most prominent opponent was sentenced Friday to an additional 19 years behind bars on extremism charges.
A Russian judge delivered the guilty verdict and sentencing in the closed-door trial against Alexey Navalny at a courtroom inside the maximum-security prison camp in Melekhovo, about 145 miles east of Moscow, where the Russian opposition leader is already serving 11 and a half years. Russian prosecutors had requested a 20-year prison term for the latest charges, which stem from Navalny's pro-democracy campaigns against Putin's regime.
It's Navalny's fifth criminal conviction and longest prison sentence to date. All of the charges have been widely viewed as a politically motivated strategy by the Kremlin to silence its fiercest critic.
Navalny, a 47-year-old lawyer turned politician, has been in jail since 2021 upon returning to Russia after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. In 2022, a Russian judge added another nine years to Navalny's sentence of 2 and a half years for embezzlement and other charges.
Earlier this year, Navalny's team sounded the alarm over his deteriorating health while in solitary confinement, saying he has not received any treatment. They said he has been repeatedly put in solitary confinement for two-week stints for months.
Read more here.
