Navalny sentenced to more jail time

Russian courts heaped more prison time and fees on the Kremlin’s top domestic critic Tuesday. Alexei Navalny, 45, called the allegations of corruption and embezzlement against him politically motivated. He plans to appeal the sentence of nine years in prison and a fine of 1.2 million rubles (about $11,500).

Isn’t he already in prison? Navalny survived nerve-agent poisoning in 2020 and went to Germany to recover. When he came back five months later, he was arrested and put in a prison camp for violating his parole, which was for a previous conviction of fraud in 2014. The European Court of Human Rights called that case “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable.” The Kremlin outlawed Navalny’s anti-corruption nonprofit as an extremist organization in January 2021. His associates said the slew of lawsuits and the decision to hold the trial in prison indicates Russian President Vladimir Putin wants to keep his top opponent behind bars indefinitely.

Dig deeper: Read Jenny Lind Schmitt’s report in WORLD Magazine about how Christians responded to protests against Putin last year.