Alexei Navalny: Jailed critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin says he faces new charges | world news
Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said he was charged with a new case and faces “up to 15 more years for my sentence” if found guilty.
Mr Navalny has been outspoken against President Vladimir Putin and has recently been sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt of court by a Russian court.
Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, has previously called the charges dubious.
Mr. Navalny, 45, wrote about the new charges on Twitter on Tuesday.
“It turns out that I created an extremist group in order to incite hatred towards public officials and oligarchs,” he said.
“And when they put me in jail, I dared to be upset about it (stupid me) and called for rallies.
“For this they are supposed to add up to 15 more years to my sentence.”
A vocal critic of Putin’s regime
Navalny, born near Moscow in the then Soviet Union, has long been Mr. Putin’s most vocal critic in Russia.
In June last year, a Russian court ruled banned groups linked to Mr. Navalny after declaring them “extremists”.
Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin accelerated its decades-long campaign to stifle and silence
Russia’s domestic opposition.
Mr Navalny has spoken out against the war, attacking Putin during a court appearance and calling the invasion “stupid” and “built on lies”.
While serving his prison sentence, he called on his fellow citizens to organize daily demonstrations.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny looks at a camera while speaking via video link from prison
Arrest and imprisonment
He was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany where he had spent time recovering from nerve agent poisoning.
The Russian opposition leader fell ill on a flight to Moscow and was later found poisoned with novichock.
Mr. Navalny blamed the poisoning on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied any involvement.
He was tried and sentenced to nine years in prison in March.
After the sentencing, he wrote on Twitter that Mr Putin was “afraid of the truth”.
Concerns have since been raised about Mr Navalny’s health in prison, and according to reports, the prison authorities refused to give him the right medication and did not allow his doctor to visit him behind bars.