In an attempt, according to his collaborators, to further isolate him, the Russian authorities yesterday detained three lawyers who have worked with Alexei Navalny, the best-known internal opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The detained lawyers are Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexéi Liptser for “participation in an extremist community”, a charge for which they face up to six years in prison, “just for being Navalny’s lawyers,” Leonid denounced on social networks. Volkov, his former right-hand man.
According to him, the “intention” is to “reinforce Navalni’s isolation,” he added. In fact, Navalni hopes to transfer him to a penal colony with a more severe “special regime” after his last conviction.
Alexei Navalny, 47, has been in prison since he was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he had recovered from poisoning with a nerve agent. He was serving a sentence of 11.5 years in prison when last August he was sentenced to another 19 years for creating an extremist community, in reference to his Foundation to Fight Corruption, which was banned in 2021. The judges also prohibited him from publishing on the internet, so he usually sends messages to his team through his lawyers. That will be more difficult now.
Navalny himself learned of the lawyers’ arrest during a court hearing in which Kobzev was to participate. “Information has just arrived that characterizes not only my process, but also the general state of the rule of law in Russia. During Soviet times, not only political activists were persecuted and turned into political prisoners, but also their lawyers,” he told the judge by videoconference from prison.
