Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny delivered a defiant speech in a Moscow court, where he targeted President Vladimir Putin and the crackdown on protests across the country over the past two weekends.
Navalny’s appearance at the Moscow City Court on Tuesday came two days after protests in cities across Russia resulted in the arrest of thousands of people who took to the streets calling for his release. The previous Saturday, demonstrations took place in 120 cities.
The opposition leader was arrested at a Moscow airport last month after returning from Berlin, where he was treated for poisoning by nervous agent Novichok in an attack he says was ordered by Putin.
Prosecutors say Navalny violated the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence in an embezzlement case he says is politically motivated. His arrest on January 17 was for alleged parole violations while he was in Germany.
During his court hearing on Tuesday, Navalny scoffed at Putin, saying that although the president tries to present himself as a politician, he is simply a “poisoner”.
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“There was Alexander, the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we will have Vladimir, the Underwear Poisoner,” said Navalny, referring to the allegation that agents of the Federal Security Service (FSB) put Novichok on the lining of his blue underwear. .
“The police are protecting me and half of Moscow is isolated because we have shown that it is demanding to steal opponents’ underwear and smear them with chemical weapons,” according to a procedure transcript from the news site MediaZona.
Describing the case against him as “forged, he said the state” with the stubbornness of a maniac, is trying to condemn me “.
“It’s easy to lock me up. The main thing in this process is to intimidate a large number of people, this is how it works. They are putting one person behind bars to scare millions, ”he added.
In his statement to the court, Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, described how his client’s poisoning was described as a “political Chernobyl”.
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Kobzev ended his speech by citing the HBO series on the 1986 nuclear plant catastrophe. Referring to a comment made by the actor who plays one of the scientists, Valery Legasov, there was a warning about the impact that Navalny’s prison could have on all of Russia.
“Legasov said, ‘Dyatlov broke all the rules and led the reactor to self-destruct,'” said Kobzev. “Nobody in that control room knew that the shutdown button would work like a detonator.” Dear judge, don’t be like Dyatlov – don’t press the button. “
Prosecutors want to turn Navalny’s suspended sentence into a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, and the judge suspended the case at 5:30 pm local time for deliberation.
Navalny’s supporters gathered near the court and until 17:00 local time, 287 people were arrested, according to OVD Info.
The Kremlin rejected international criticism of Navalny’s arrest and the crackdown on protests, even accusing the United States of being behind the demonstrations.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the presence of foreign diplomats at the Navalny trial demonstrated Western interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
The Kremlin continues to deny responsibility for Navalny’s poisoning and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the lack of evidence shows that this could have been staged, according to local news.
Yuri Felshtinsky is a Russian security services expert and author of Exploding Russia, which he co-wrote with Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB officer who was killed by polonium poisoning in London in 2006, a murder attributed to the Kremlin.
He said the authorities did not want to release Navalny, especially since the FSB’s attempt to poison him had been unsuccessful, which posed a major problem for the Kremlin.
“With Navalny they missed the moment,” he said Newsweek Last week. “They tried to poison him, it was a good time to poison him, they failed, now they have to deal with the outcome of that particular failure.”
He added: “Since then, he has become extremely popular, now everyone is listening to him.”
Felshtinsky believed Navalny was a greater threat to Putin than Boris Nemtsov, the opposition figure who was shot outside the Kremlin walls in 2015.
“Navalny appeals to different forces … he is fighting corruption and this is very popular. For Putin, the fact that he is popular is an indication that he is a great danger.
“The Kremlin is not thinking ‘we have to deal with corruption, or we really have to allow Navalny to form his party and be part of the Russian parliament and openly discuss the situation and give him time on Russian state television’.
“This is not the direction they are going to take, repression is the only thing they can use.”
The chart below provided by Statista describes Putin’s time in power.
