Russia seeks 20 years in jail for Kremlin critic Navalny

MOSCOW: Russian prosecutors on Thursday requested a jail term of 20 years for the already imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who denounced Russia´s “senseless war” in his last statement to the court.

The case comes more than a year into Russia´s full-scale offensive in Ukraine, which unleashed an unprecedented crackdown on the Kremlin´s critics, with many now in exile or in jail. Russian President Vladimir Putin´s most prominent critic, accused of extremism-linked charges, is expected to hear his verdict on August 4.

As the prosecutors´ announcement came, the European Union added the chief of the Russian prison camp holding Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to its sanctions list. The trial has been held behind closed doors at the maximum security prison where he is jailed, the IK-6 penal colony, some 250-km east of Moscow.

Navalny, 47, once mobilised massive anti-Kremlin protests but is now serving a nine-year prison sentence on embezzlement charges that his supporters see as punishment for his political work. He was arrested in 2021 on his arrival in Moscow from Germany, where he had been recovering from a poisoning attack that he blamed on the Kremlin.