Russia sends Navalny associate to prison for ‘extremism’

A court in Siberia on Friday sentenced an ally of jailed Russian opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to nine years in prison for running an “extremist organization,” her legal team said. The verdict signals the Kremlin’s willingness to continue its crackdown on members of Navalny’s political group, years after it was banned in Russia.

In 2020, the defendant, Ksenia V. Fadeyeva, won a seat in the municipal parliament of the Siberian city of Tomsk, a position she held while also coordinating Mr. Navalny’s political office in the region.

Mr Navalny, the only politician who has been able to pose a major challenge to the Kremlin over the past decade by building a robust political organization with officers from across the country, is currently serving a 19-year prison sentence in a remote penal colony in Russia. Arctic. He emerged there on Monday after being transferred from another prison in central Russia, almost three weeks after his allies said they were alarmed at having lost contact with him.

In June 2021, the Moscow court labeled Mr Navalny’s political organization as “extremist”, effectively banning it. In anticipation of the decision, all its offices across the country were dissolved before the ruling. The offices represented a rare nationwide political organization in Russia whose goal was to remove President Vladimir V. Putin from power.

But Russian authorities continued and intensified the crackdown after the invasion of Ukraine.

In June, a court in the city of Ufa sentenced Lilia Chanysheva, the former coordinator of Mr. Navalny’s office in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan, to seven and a half years in prison on charges of extremism. Then in July, Vadim Ostanin, the former coordinator of Mr. Navalny’s office in the Siberian city of Barnaul, was sentenced to nine years in prison, also on charges of extremism. Many others linked to Mr Navalny have also received sentences or had to leave Russia.

After the verdict, Semyon Vodnev, one of Ms. Fadeyeva’s lawyers, said her trial had “nothing to do with justice” and that they would appeal the verdict.

“I believe the verdict was illegal, unwarranted and unjust,” he said a video posted by Ms Fadeyeva’s support group on the messaging app Telegram. “But if I say more, I will probably have to sit next to Ksenia.”