The most well-known face of the Russian opposition has been in prison for more than a year. Now he has to go to a prison for serious criminals – with worse prison conditions.
The Russian opposition politician Alexej Navalny is being transferred from his previous prison camp to a stricter prison for serious criminals. The Moscow City Court dismissed the appeal against a judgment from a previous instance, as reported by the Interfax news agency.
This means a nine-year prison sentence for alleged fraud, among other things. As a result, Navalny is set to be relocated soon. In Russian prisons for criminals, inmates are less likely to meet relatives, receive parcels and letters, or go outside into the fresh air. Navalny’s team fears that the 45-year-old will be imprisoned much further away from Moscow in the future. The opposition politician barely survived a poison attack in the summer of 2020, from which he recovered for months in Germany. He is considered one of President Vladimir Putin’s harshest critics.
Navalny, who has been in a camp about 100 kilometers from the Russian capital since the beginning of last year, was convicted in another controversial trial in March. He used the appeal process, to which he was connected via video, to criticize Russia’s war against Ukraine: “You are suffering a historic defeat in the stupid war you started. It has no purpose and no purpose.”
