The decision inflamed anger among Navalny’s supporters. Vast crowds of people took to the streets in central Moscow following the sentencing and hundreds have been detained. Navalny’s allies had already called for another round of nationwide demonstrations this weekend.
The court on Tuesday ruled that while Navalny was out of the country, he violated probation from a 2014 embezzlement case in which he had received a three-and-a-half year suspended sentence and five years of probation. Navalny describes the case politically motivated. Under Russian law, convicted criminals are barred from running for political office.
His suspended sentence will now be replaced with a prison term. The judge took into account the 11 months Navalny had already spent under house arrest as part of the decision.
Navalny’s lawyer Olga Mikhailova told CNN he will appeal the verdict. Speaking outside the courthouse after the sentencing, she said Navalny took the verdict “bravely as usual.”
His team in Moscow criticized the ruling as Putin’s “personal revenge” and called on supporters to gather in Manezhnaya Square near the Kremlin. “This is Vladimir Putin’s personal revenge. For investigating corruption. For having survived after poisoning. For exposing the FSB killers. For not being scared and returning to Russia,” the team said on Twitter.
The verdict also sparked condemnation abroad. US Secretary of State Tony Blinken called on the Russian government to “immediately and unconditionally release” Navalny. The UK, Germany, France and others issued similar statements.
Navalny tears into Putin
As he listened to the judge read out a lengthy verdict, Navalny drew a heart on the glass box he was confined in for his wife, Yulia Navalnya, who was in the court room.
Earlier, he had ridiculed allegations that he could have better informed parole officers of his whereabouts while comatose to the objections of prosecutors and repeatedly being told by the judge to stop speaking.
“Can you explain to me how else I was supposed to fulfill the terms of my probation and notify where I am?” he said from his glass enclosure.
A prison service representative responded by asking why he had not provided documents to explain the serious reasons that prevented him from showing up for inspections.
“Coma?” Navalny shot back. “Why are you sitting here and telling the court you didn’t know where I was? I fell into a coma, then I was in the ICU, then in rehabilitation. I contacted my lawyer to send you a notice. You had the address, my contact details. What else could I have done to inform you?” he said.
“The President of our country said live on air he let me go to get treatment in Germany and you didn’t know that too?”
In a separate outburst, Navalny described Putin as a “little thieving man in his bunker” who “doesn’t want me to set foot on the ground in Russia.”
“The reason for this is the hatred and fear of one person who is hiding in the bunker. I’ve offended him so deeply by the fact that I’ve survived,” Navalny charged.
When a prosecutor tried to object, Navalny snapped back: “I don’t need your objections.”
“He can pretend he is this big politician, the world leader, but now my main offense to him is that he will go down in history as Putin the Poisoner. There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise, and there will be Vladimir the Poisoner of Underpants,” Navalny added.
“He is not engaging in geopolitics, he holds meetings on how to smear underwear with chemical weapons.”
Navalny’s defense lawyers argued the prison service was well aware of Navalyny’s whereabouts as it received a notice from him in early December. His lawyers also presented a letter from Berlin’s Charite Clinic showing that he was in rehabilitation up until his return to Russia.
T
he case in which Navalny was sentenced on Tuesday dates back to 2014, when he and his brother Oleg were convicted of embezzling about $500,000 from two Russian firms between 2008 and 2012.
One of the firms was affiliated with a French cosmetics company, Yves Rocher, and the investigation alleged that the Navalnys laundered part of the sum. Both were sentenced to three-and-a half years in prison, but Alexey’s sentence was suspended.
In 2017, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the brothers were unfairly convicted in the case and that Russian courts handed down “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable” decisions in the case.
Mass detentions
Tuesday’s hearing opened under a heavy security presence, with riot police securing the court building and cordoning off the general area with police vehicles, trucks and vans. Nearby streets were open but closed to pedestrians and protesters with barricades.
CNN reporters witnessed police detaining dozens of people outside the court before the hearing had begun.
On Sunday, protesters across the country were met with the harshest show of force by Russian security services in years. More than 5,000 people were detained in at least 85 cities, according to OVD-Info, a record since 2011 protests. Navalny led mass protests in 2017-18 against Putin’s government.
“Yulia, they show you on TV and keep talking about your radical behavior. Such a bad girl, I’m proud of you,” Navalny said shortly before his hearing began.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier that Putin was not planning on following Navalny’s hearing Tuesday, and was instead meeting with “teachers who are teaching the future generation of Russia.”
CNN’s Anna Chernova and Richard Allen Greene contributed to this report.