Russia seeking 20-year sentence for Navalny, ally says

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny may face an additional 20 years in prison, an ally said Thursday.

Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year sentence for the anti-Kremlin leader in a closed-door trial, Ivan Zhdanov told The Associated Press.

Navalny was arrested in January 2021 on fraud charges after he returned to Russia following a nerve agent attack which nearly killed him. Navalny was poisoned with the Novichok nerve agent while on a flight and required a medically induced coma to survive.

He has led the Russian opposition since 2013.

Navalny is already serving a nine-year sentence for the fraud charges and parole violations, charges the U.S. has called politically motivated. The new charges stem from his political anti-corruption work, which exposed high-level corruption in the Russian government, including by President Vladimir Putin.

Allies have claimed that the charges are fraudulent and seek to retroactively criminalize Navalny’s past political conduct.