A senior adviser to Alexei Navalny said Tuesday he was “very concerned” that the jailed Russian opposition leader will be assassinated after he was sentenced to nine more years in a maximum-security prison in a Russian courtroom.
“There is nothing to stop the Russian security services from murdering a person anywhere in the world, let alone in a Russian prison, which is a brutal place,” said Vladimir Ashurkov, executive director of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation , in an interview with the Yahoo News podcast Skullduggery.
Ashurkov condemned what he called the “bizarre” verdict against Navalny, which he says was handed down by a judge he described as “a puppet of someone sitting in the Kremlin.” But he added that the harsh sentence was the latest in a series of brutal crackdowns on dissidents by the Kremlin following the invasion of Ukraine. Ashurkov said this fueled opposition to President Vladimir Putin’s government, which could ultimately lead to his ouster.
Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, center, and his wife Yulia, right, at a rally in Moscow in February 2019. (Andrey Rudakov/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
“This war, this aggression, I believe, will hasten the downfall of Putin’s regime,” Ashurkov said. When asked if he was calling on those in Putin’s inner circle for a coup, Ashurkov replied, “You don’t need my call to state that it’s in your interest to get rid of the lunatic and work towards a new Russia.”
Ashurkov was speaking from London, where he now lives in exile, just hours after Navalny was forced to stand hours in court as a judge outlined his conviction for contempt of court and alleged embezzlement of funds from the anti-corruption foundation he founded . The organization is dedicated to exposing the corruption of various Russian oligarchs, political leaders and Putin himself.
Ashurkov, who heads the foundation, noted that Navalny was convicted of embezzling the funds, although “no bank records show he took anything from there, not even a salary.” The charges were first laid after Navalny returned from Germany, where he was being treated for poisoning, and came after the foundation revealed details of a massive multi-billion dollar palace said to have been built for Putin on the Black Sea.
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Navalny’s verdict came just days after he spoke out in court against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, which he called “crazy” and said it would lead to “the country’s disintegration”.
Navalny appears in a video link at the hearing of the verdict in his trial for embezzlement and contempt of court on Tuesday. (-/AFP via Getty Images)
“It is now the duty of every human being to fight this war,” Navalny said.
After his conviction, Navalny maintained his often ironic opposition to Putin’s government, tweet“9 years. Well, as the characters of my favorite TV show, The Wire, used to say, “You only do two days. That’s the day you go in and the day you come out.” I even had a t-shirt with that slogan, but prison authorities confiscated it because they thought the print was extremist.”