MOSCOW – Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent opposition leader, appeared in court on Tuesday at a hearing that could send him to a long prison term in an extensive penal colony for the first time.
Russian authorities have signaled that they will not be influenced by public pressure to release Navalny, the 44-year-old anti-corruption activist. They put several of their main allies under house arrest and, on Sunday, deployed a huge police force in cities across Russia to contain protests in recent weeks calling for their freedom.
“Hundreds of thousands cannot be arrested,” said Navalny during the hearing. “I really hope that more and more people will recognize this. And when they recognize that – and that moment will come – it will all fall apart, because you cannot lock up the entire country. “
In anticipation of more protests on Tuesday, a strong presence of riot police in black armor, camouflage and helmets isolated the Moscow district around the court. The cops stopped in front of the entrances to the nearest subway station and checked people’s documents, and the parking lots around the station were full of police vans carrying reinforcements. The police detained at least 237 people, according to the activist group OVD-Info.
The court assessed the prosecution’s charge that Navalny violated probation in a three and a half year suspended prison sentence he received in 2014. He and his brother were convicted of stealing about $ 500,000 from two companies, a conviction of which the European Court of Human Rights called “arbitrary and manifestly irrational”.
Navalny and his allies, along with many independent analysts, see his accusation as an effort by President Vladimir V. Putin to silence his highest critic.
According to the terms of the previous sentence, the authorities say that Navalny should consult with the prison authorities at least twice a month. But prosecutors say he repeatedly failed to do so last year, including after he was discharged from a Berlin hospital in September while recovering from a poisoning attempt.
Towards the end of the hearing, Navalny delivered a fiery speech in court, in which he blamed Putin for trying to arrest him. He said the Russian president was angry that Navalny survived after being poisoned by military nerve agent Novichok in August, in what he and Western officials described as an attempted state assassination.
Navalny accused the Russian domestic intelligence agency of trying to kill him on Putin’s orders by applying Novichok to the underwear of the opposition leader. The Kremlin has denied involvement in the poisoning.
“His main resentment against me now is that he will go down in history as a poisoner,” said Navalny of Putin. “There was Alexandre the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we have Vladimir, the Underwear Poisoner. “
Navalny’s associates said that only street protests could force the Kremlin to change course, and tens of thousands of people had gathered across Navalny over the past two weekends in Russian cities.
At the beginning of the hearing, Navalny – confined to a glass case for defendants, as is typical in Russia – smiled frequently and maintained his sense of humor. When the judge, Natalia Repnikova, asked him to introduce himself, he replied: “Your Honor, you forgot to introduce yourself”.
When Ms. Repnikova asked for her current address, he said, “Pre-trial Detention Center # 1.”
During a pause in the process, Mr. Navalny, wearing pants and a dark sweatshirt, paced his box. At one point, he looked at the representation of the French philosopher Montesquieu and other luminaries on the wooden paneled wall of the great court.
The prosecution asked Mr. Navalny for three and a half years in prison, minus the time he spent under house arrest related to the case, which was about a year. The prosecutor, Yekaterina Frolova, said Navalny was guilty of “systematic violations of the obligations imposed on him by the court”.
Mr. Navalny repeatedly fought with Mrs. Frolova, calling her “an honorable daughter of the regime”, but then added, “You lie in every word.” He said he was being sued to prevent millions of other Russians from rising up against Putin.
The audience’s choreography seemed designed to portray the due process granted to Mr. Navalny. Authorities moved the audience from a courtroom outside Moscow to a larger one in the city – in order, they said, to allow more journalists to be present.
Two carved judicial scales flanked the Russian double-headed eagle above the robed judge. Repnikova, the judge, peppered the accusation with direct questions, probing her arguments. Mr. Navalny was allowed to deliver his tirade and criticize the judge and prosecutor, with few interruptions. But journalists were banned from filming the process or taking pictures.
The prosecution’s case to send Mr. Navalny to prison was based heavily on technicalities. A prison service officer, Aleksandr Yermolin, read in a low voice a stack of papers detailing Navalny’s alleged violations of parole. The prosecution said the violations started before Navalny’s poisoning last August.
At one point, Yermolin cited online posts showing that Navalny was moving freely around Germany while he did not present his parole last year. At another point, the prosecutor, Yekaterina Frolova, responded to an argument by Mr. Navalny’s lawyers questioning the day of the week on which the defendant had contacted parole officials.
“January 9 was a Thursday, which has nothing to do with a Monday,” said the prosecutor.
Mr. Navalny and his lawyers, in long comings and goings with the prosecution, insisted that they had notified parole officials of their inability to appear in person due to the poisoning. Navalny noted that even Putin had publicly referred last year to the fact that Navalny was being treated in Germany.
“Say, dear comrade captain, do you respect the President of Russia, Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin?” Mr Navalny asked the prison official, Mr Yermolin.
Navalny, poking at the glass in front of him, added, “Based on what you say you didn’t know about my location?”
Mr. Navalny was confined to house arrest for much of 2014 and served repeated prison terms for several weeks in a row. So far, however, he has never served a long prison sentence.
Analysts say the Kremlin calculation has long been that Navalny may be more of a risk behind bars – as Russia’s most prominent political prisoner – than walking free as an often controversial opposition activist.
That thought seems to have changed as the Russian public’s frustration with Putin increased, along with Navalny’s prominence.
After his poisoning, Navalny was flown in a coma to Berlin, where he recovered. He returned to Moscow last month, although Russian authorities have made it clear that he would face years in prison.
He was arrested on arrival, after which his team released a report by Navalny that described an alleged secret palace built for Putin. The report was viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube, energized pro-Navalny protests and highlighted the opposition leader’s ability to reach a large audience on Russia’s almost free internet.
But Putin looks set to survive the turmoil because of Navalny’s treatment. No sign emerged of support for protesters within the government, parliament, large companies or security services, which remain firmly in Putin’s hands.
Splits within the elite, which are nowhere to be seen at least on the surface of Russia, were instrumental in the success of street movements in other former Soviet states.
On Tuesday, the Kremlin once again sought to downplay the importance of Navalny’s case by issuing a veiled warning to the European Union’s top foreign policy official, Josep Borrell Fontelles, who plans to visit Moscow this week.
“We hope there is nothing as foolish as linking the future of Russian-European relations to the case of this inhabitant of the provisional detention center,” said Kremlin spokesman Dmitri S. Peskov, according to state news agency Tass .
Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reports.