A court at his IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km east of Moscow, on Friday brought to a close his trial on six separate charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organisation.
Navalny’s team said the judge had added 19 years to his existing terms. State prosecutors had asked for 20. Unconfirmed Russian media reports said that Navalny, now 47, would be 74 years old by the time he got out of prison in 2050.
The former blogger, lawyer and corruption investigator has cast himself as a political martyr whose aim is to demonstrate to Russians that it is possible to resist Putin, albeit at great cost. “For a new, free, rich country to be born, it must have parents. Those who want it. Who expect it and who are willing to make sacrifices for its birth,” Navalny said in his closing statement last month. In a message posted on social media on Thursday, he had predicted he would get a long jail term, but said it hardly mattered because he was also threatened with separate terrorism charges that could bring another decade. Navalny said the purpose of giving him extra jail time was to frighten Russians, but urged them not to be cowed and to think hard about how best to resist what he called “villains and thieves in the Kremlin“.
The charges relate to his role in his now defunct movement inside Russia, which the authorities accused of trying to foment a revolution by seeking to destabilise the socio-political situation. The US called the verdict an “unjust conclusion to an unjust trial”, while the EU condemned what it called another politically motivated ruling.