Russia: Penalty increased for Navalny employee

In Russia, the sentence against a former employee of the dead Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny has been increased by two years to nine and a half years in prison. A court in the city of Ufa in the Urals followed a complaint by the public prosecutor’s office against the June 2023 verdict for, among other things, the alleged creation of an “extremist organization” and increased the punishment for Lilia Chanysheva. Navalny’s team announced this. Internationally, imprisoned Navalny supporters are considered political prisoners of the repressive Russian power apparatus.

The spokeswoman for the Navalny team, Kira Yarmysch, spoke of a “horror” verdict from an inhumane system. She had already criticized the first verdict as a “crime” of Russia’s arbitrary justice system. “A brave, honest woman has been convicted for fighting for Russia’s future,” Yarmysch wrote on the X news network (formerly Twitter).

Chanysheva had led the team of Navalny supporters in Ufa for four years, but said she stopped her work when the Russian judiciary classified the organization as “extremist” in 2021 and thus effectively banned it.

According to authorities, Navalny himself died on February 16 in the penal camp with the unofficial name “Arctic Wolf” in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal. The circumstances of his death are not clear. The politician, who was weakened by a poison attack in 2020 and repeated solitary confinement in the camp, is said to have collapsed during a tour of the icy prison yard and died despite attempts to resuscitate him. According to Navalny’s team, the death certificate mentions “natural” causes. Navalny’s relatives speak of murder.