Russian state prosecutors requested a judge sentence Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to an additional 13 years in prison on charges of fraud and contempt of court, the independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported Tuesday.
Navalny is currently on trial from prison, where he is serving a two-and-a-half year sentence. Russia’s most high-profile opposition figure, Navalny was poisoned in 2020 with a nerve agent while campaigning in Siberia.
He was immediately arrested upon his return to Russia in January 2021 following treatment in Germany and Russian authorities have since sought to extend his jail term, launching a number of cases against him over the last year.
Hours earlier, Navalny’s team released a video investigation claiming to have obtained call logs that allegedly show the Kremlin’s chief of public relations department calling judge Margarita Kotova before and during his trials last month.
Responding to the request, Navalny’s chief aide Leonid Volkov said: "Alexei Navalny's sentence is well known: life in prison. Until one of two people's lives ends: Navalny's, or Vladimir Putin's. If Putin thinks he'll be there 13 more years, he's overestimating his own abilities."
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