Comment on this storyComment
RIGA, Latvia — Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who faces “extremism” charges in a case that could add decades to his sentence, sat in a courtroom after the weekend’s Wagner mercenary uprising. He stared in awe as his lawyers showed him pictures of the crisis.
Navalny has been accused of trying to overthrow the Russian authorities himself. He was stunned to learn that Yevgeny Prigozhin, who sent tank columns rolling toward Moscow and whose fighters shot down six Russian helicopters and a plane, had escaped insurgency charges thanks to an agreement with President Vladimir Putin.
When the rebels rushed toward Moscow on Saturday, and Prigozhin released audio messages declaring that he and his men were “ready to die” and would shoot any forces who oppose them, Navalny was in a grim prison colony with no access to the news, he said. either on the radio, on television, or by other inmates.
“I can’t see other people, and if I can, I’m not allowed to talk to them” Navalny wrote in a thread posted by his team on Twitter.
Little did he know, then, that Putin was grappling with his biggest crisis since he came to power in 1999 — the kind of upheaval that Navalny had long predicted would present the only possibility for change in the Russian government.
When his lawyers told him about the crisis in court on Monday, he wrote: “I thought it was some kind of new joke or internet meme that hasn’t reached me yet.”
“Instead, the prosecutor came and we continued the trial accusing me of founding an organization to use force to overthrow President Putin,” he wrote.
Navalny, who has already served more than eleven years in prison, faces a long prison sentence in the new trial. He is accused of founding an extremist organization – his Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF) – which for years has been exposing the mysterious corruption in the Russian state.
Lukashenko claims he convinced Putin not to kill Wagner boss Prigozhin
He is also accused of other charges in the secret trial, including “rehabilitating Nazi ideology”.
“While listening to these allegations, I looked at the photo of a roadblock with a grenade launcher in the Yasenevo district of Moscow,” Navalny wrote, referring to sandbag barriers hastily erected on the outskirts of the capital on Saturday.
“While listening to the ACF being extremists dangerous to the country, I read how a group of Russian troops ‘took positions on the Oka River’ to defend against another group of Russian troops.”
In 2021, Russia banned the ACF and Navalny’s political network as “extremist,” paving the way for a new trial.
One of the foundation’s most notable investigations, “Putin’s Palace,” garnered 127 million views and alleges corruption by the president. The Kremlin denied the report.
It was released in 2021, two days after Navalny was arrested after returning to Russia from Germany, where he was recovering from poisoning with a banned chemical nerve agent. The Foreign Ministry said the attack was carried out by the Russian state. The Kremlin also denied that.
In Putin’s weekend deal with Prigozhin, he agreed to drop the insurgency charges against the Wagner leader if he moved to Belarus and took with him all the Wagner fighters who didn’t want to sign contracts with the Russian Defense Ministry or go home.
On Tuesday, Putin admitted for the first time that Wagner was “entirely funded by the state” after years of keeping the mercenary group, which is actually illegal in Russia, at bay. Putin said Prigozhin and Wagner received about $2 billion a year.
As Russia’s war against Ukraine drags on, Putin has cracked down on critics of his government and opponents of the war.
Another prominent opposition leader and Washington Post contributor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was convicted of treason and sentenced to 25 years in prison at a closed trial in April for opposing the war and speaking out about Russian massacres of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. Other members of the opposition received prison sentences of more than seven years.
After the mutiny, the crackdown on critical voices seemed to intensify. On Wednesday, Russia’s Attorney General declared the Riga-based independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europa an “undesirable organization” and made it a crime for any Russian at home or abroad to work for or collaborate with it.
Prosecutors said the newspaper, whose editor-in-chief received the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize, “threatens the foundations of constitutional order and the security of the state” – citing its reporting of war crimes by Russian forces in Ukraine and articles citing Navalny and his organizations.
Navalny blamed Putin for the Wagner crisis and said he allowed the mercenary group to thrive: “It’s dictators and power grabs that lead to chaos, weak government and chaos,” he wrote.
After Putin’s speech on the deal with mercenaries, Russia faces divisions
It was not the Russian opposition, the AKF or the West that shot down helicopters and brought the country to the brink of civil war, Navalny stressed, adding that Prigozhin had also threatened Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.
“It was Putin himself who did that. I remind you that he personally pardoned all convicts who were on their way to murder Shoigu and anyone else they wanted to kill,” Navalny wrote, referring to Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners who were pardoned by Putin, if they survived six months of fighting.
“The fact that Putin’s war could ruin and disintegrate Russia is no longer a dramatic exclamation,” he wrote. “It is not democracy, human rights and parliamentarianism that weaken the regime and lead to unrest.”
Navalny was sent to punishment cells 15 times for minor offenses, such as undoing the top button of his prison uniform or washing his hands at the wrong time. As his health deteriorated and he lost weight, his team expressed fears that authorities would attempt to fracture or kill him.
The Supreme Court of Russia even denied him access to pen and paper.
“I’m not asking for extra food; “I’m not asking for a Christmas tree to be put up in my cell,” Navalny told the court in an appeal that was dismissed last week, the independent Russian news agency Mediazona reported. “We’re talking about the basic human right to have a pen in the cell and a piece of paper to write a letter to the court.”
Give this item as a gift
Understanding the Russia-Ukraine conflict
Check out 3 more stories