Putin critic Alexei Navalny loses second prison sentence appeal

Alexei Navalny, a prominent critic of Russian president Vladimir Putin, lost his second appeal of his nine-year prison sentence on Tuesday.

His first appeal was rejected in May.

Navalny, 46, was sentenced in March 2022 after being convicted of fraud and contempt of court and has been imprisoned since January 2021 when he returned to Russia after recovering from an assassination attempt in which he was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok. The Kremlin denied any involvement in the incident.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny appears in a video link provided by the Russian Federal Penitentiary Service in a courtroom of the Second Cassation Court of General Jurisdiction in Moscow, Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2022. (Alexander Zemlianichenko/)

He had previously been convicted of a parole violation that he described as politically motivated.

In October 2021, the Kremlin designated Navalny as an extremist and terrorist.

Navalny revealed in June 2022 that he was facing an additional 15 years in prison after an investigator visited him in prison and accused him of encouraging unsanctioned rallies and that he created “an extremist group to fan hatred against officials and oligarchs.”

Navalny’s allies have suggested publicly that the additional charges are part of a Kremlin plan to keep him behind bars indefinitely.

In August 2022, he was placed in solitary confinement after starting a convicts union inside the prison.

Navalny has continued to rail against Putin from his cell, penning an op-ed in the Washington Post calling for Russia to transform into a parliamentary democracy after the conclusion of its war with Ukraine.

“Postwar Russia, like post-Putin Russia, will be doomed to become belligerent and Putinist again,” Navalny wrote. “This is inevitable as long as the current form of the country’s development is maintained. Only a parliamentary republic can prevent this.”

With News Wire Services