Russia on Wednesday sentenced exiled opposition figure Leonid Volkov — the former right-hand man of late opposition leader Alexei Navalny — to 18 years in a penal colony under a litany of charges.
Volkov, who is now based in Lithuania, laughed off the charges in posts to social media.
Russia has continued to crack down on Navalny’s allies and family even after the Kremlin opponent’s death in an Arctic prison last year — which authorities have not fully explained.
Moscow banned Navalny’s organisations in 2021 as “extremist” and accelerated that crackdown with Russia’s massive clampdown on dissent that came with its 2022 Ukraine offensive.
“Volkov was found guilty of more than 40 episodes of crimes in nine criminal cases,” the Interfax news agency said, quoting a Moscow military court.
Russia has made wide use of censorship laws introduced following its invasion of Ukraine to silence criticism of the three-year war.
Volkov was convicted on charges including “justifying terrorism”, spreading “fakes” about the army, fraud and creating an “extremist” organisation.
But he made light of it Wednesday.
“Detente! Got 18 years,” Volkov said in a post on Telegram, in a tongue-in-cheek remark typical of Navalny’s political camp.
Volkov left Russia in 2019 after authorities opened a criminal case against him. He has been on Russia’s wanted list since 2021.
The 44-year-old was the victim of a brutal hammer attack in April last year outside his home in Vilnius. Navalny’s allies later blamed another camp of the anti-Kremlin opposition.
The attack had divided the already splintered opposition, which has been forced into exile and severely weakened by the loss of its main figurehead Navalny.
Navalny was President Vladimir Putin’s main political opponent, the only figure in Russia able to bring thousands to the streets in anti-Kremlin protests in the years before Moscow’s Ukraine offensive.
