Russia sentences Navalny ally in absentia to 18 years in prison

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MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russian dissident and Kremlin critic Leonid Volkov, a prominent ally of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was sentenced in absentia on Wednesday to 18 years in prison.

The sentence was handed out by a Russian military court that found Volkov guilty on dozens of charges, including spreading fake news about the war in Ukraine and “justifying terrorism”.

Volkov, who lives in Lithuania, made light of the verdict, describing the accompanying 2-million-rouble ($25,400) fine as a slap on the wrist. “And they didn’t ban me from using the internet! Well, I’ll use it then,” he wrote on social media.

In a subsequent post, he corrected himself and said, after reading the full verdict, that he had in fact been banned from using the internet for 10 years.

“And I’ve already started using it. Damn. What should I do?” he wrote, tongue-in-cheek.

Navalny, the most prominent domestic critic of President Vladimir Putin, died suddenly in February 2024 in an Arctic penal colony at the age of 47. He had been serving prison terms totalling more than 30 years on fraud, extremism and other charges that he said were trumped up to silence him.

The authorities designated his movement as “extremist,” casting it as a Western-backed organisation bent on fomenting unrest and revolution.

Despite Navalny’s death, investigators have continued to launch new cases against his supporters and associates, many of whom have been designated as “foreign agents” or extremists.

In January, three lawyers who had worked for Navalny were found guilty of belonging to an extremist group and sentenced to terms of up to 5-1/2 years in a penal colony.

In April, four journalists were sentenced to 5-1/2 years each after being found guilty of working for Navalny’s banned organisation.

(Reporting by Reuters; writing by Mark Trevelyan; editing by Andrew Osborn and Mark Heinrich)