Russian Court sentences Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny to 3.5 years in jail

Moscow: A Russian court jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny for three and half years of jail sentence on Tuesday in a ruling which the opposition politician blamed on what he called President Vladimir Putin’s hatred and fear of him.

Given that the opposition figure had previously spent 10 months under house arrest during a previous phase of the trial, the verdict means Navalny will now spend the next two years and eight months in a Russian penal colony.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics, was arrested at the Russian border on January 17 after returning from Germany where he had been recovering from being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent.

Protesters gathered again in the streets of Moscow on Tuesday to protest against the sentencing, following which over 1,000 people were detained by law enforcement authorities. This comes after police detained over 4,000 people in connection to the protests in Moscow on Sunday, which saw thousands of people gather to oppose Navalny’s detention. On January 23, similar protests took place across Russia, which saw over 3,500 people being detained by the police.

The United States, Britain and Germany urged Moscow to immediately free Navalny, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken saying Washington would coordinate closely with allies to hold Russia accountable.

Tuesday’s hearing focused on Navalny’s alleged parole violations over a suspended sentence in a 2014 embezzlement case Navalny says was trumped up.