Three lawyers who once represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny were jailed in Russia on Friday as part of a Kremlin crackdown on dissent that has reached levels not seen since Soviet times.
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser were sentenced by a court in the city of Petushki, about 100 kilometers east of Moscow, to prison terms of 3.5 to five years. They were detained in October 2023 on charges of participation in extremist groups, as the authorities considered Navalny's networks.
The case was widely seen as a way to increase pressure on the opposition to discourage defenders from taking up political causes.
At the time, Navalny was serving 19 years in prison for several convictions, including extremism. He died in a Russian prisoner of war camp in February 2023.
The independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta reported that on January 10, Kobzev said in his last statement to the court that “a trial is underway against us for transmitting Navalny's thoughts to other people.”
Navalny's networks were deemed extremist following a 2021 ruling that banned his organizations – the Anti-Corruption Foundation and a network of regional offices – as extremist groups.
The ruling, which exposes all people associated with the organizations to prosecution, was condemned by Kremlin critics as politically motivated and aimed at suppressing Navalny's activities.
According to Navalny's allies, the authorities accuse the lawyers of using their position to provide his team with information from him.
He died in prison
Navalny, an anti-corruption activist and outspoken opponent of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin. He was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison.
After two further trials, his sentence was extended to 19 years. He and his allies said the charges were politically motivated and accused the Kremlin of seeking to sentence him to life in prison.
In December 2023, Navalny was transferred from a penal colony in the Vladimir Oblast east of Moscow to a colony above the Arctic Circle, where in February, at the age of 47, he died in still unexplained circumstances. His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and members of his team claimed that he was murdered on the orders of the Kremlin. Officials rejected the accusation.
Two of Navalny's other lawyers, Olga Mikhailova and Alexander Fedulov, are on the wanted list but no longer live in Russia. Mikhailova, who defended Navalny for a decade, said she was facing extremism charges in absentia.
Kobzev, Liptser and Sergunin have been recognized as political prisoners, say human rights defenders from Memorial, the most important Russian legal organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022. The group demands their immediate release.