D-DAY FOR KREMLIN CRITIC AS RUSSIAN COURT SET TO CONSIDER LONGER JAIL TERM

Tue 02 February 2021:

A Russian court is due to consider jailing Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny for up to three and a half years later on Tuesday in a case that has sparked nationwide protests.

Navalny, one of President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics, was arrested at the Russian border on Jan. 17 after returning from Germany last month – faces the prospect of a lengthy spell behind bars.

Vladimir Putin’s press spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Moscow would ignore statements from the Biden administration, following Sunday’s mass pro-Navalny protests.

Navalny accuses Putin of ordering his murder, something the Kremlin denies. It in turn has suggested that Navalny is an asset of America’s Central Intelligence Agency, a charge he rejects.

Moscow’s state prison authority accuses Navalny of parole violations and wants the court to convert a suspended sentence he had been serving in an embezzlement case he calls trumped up into a real jail term of up to three and a half years.

Navalny says he was unable to report into the prison service at the end of last year because he was recovering in Germany from being poisoned.

State prosecutors said on Monday that they would ask the court to grant the prison authority’s request.

Navalny is already serving out a 30 day detention sentence in connection with the same case.

After demonstrators took to the streets in 90 towns and cities across the country riot police responded with a major show of force. They made a record number of arrests, detaining 5,300 people, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who was seized in north-east Moscow.

The White House was reviewing whether to impose further sanctions in the wake of Moscow’s “deeply disturbing” actions, Blinken said. These included the recent SolarWinds cyber-hack on US federal institutions, and claims Russia was offering bounty payments to Taliban fighters to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan.

Moscow’s detention centres are overflowing, with 1,800 people arrested in the capital last weekend, Novaya Gazeta reported on Monday. Some protesters have been kept for days in police wagons, with others transferred to a detention centre for migrants, the paper said.