Alexey Navalny, who is rightly called the leader of the Russian opposition, is on trial again.

The new trial has begun in the prison colony where Navalny is currently serving a nine-year sentence. There’s no doubt it will end with an even harsher sentence, perhaps similar to that of Vladimir Kara-Murza, another opposition leader, who received 25 years in prison for ‘treason’ in April, though Navalny says he could receive up to 30 years.

Navalny is accused of seven separate criminal charges, including the setting up of an ‘extremist community’ and its financing, the involvement of minors in criminal activities, and even the rehabilitation of Nazism.

His trial has, understandably, faded into the background after Yevgeny Prigozhin’s rebellion. But the chaos of this weekend’s “march on Moscow” has demonstrated that Vladimir Putin cannot be sure of his future. And if Prigozhin has become one of the alternatives to the current government for supporters of the war, then Navalny has long been one of the liberal opponents of the regime.

I can’t even count how many criminal charges Navalny has faced so far, and I’m the editor-in-chief of a Russian media outlet that covers political trials. I’m not sure that even Navalny could list all the criminal cases he’s had over the years, at least not without the help of Wikipedia.

But today, the authorities are not even trying to prove anything to Russian society. If Navalny used to be prosecuted on fraud and embezzlement charges, then today the investigations clearly relate to his political campaigning.

The current trial is being held completely behind closed doors, and the message is clear: Navalny is an enemy of the Russian authorities.

Navalny vs the Russian state

Navalny has been pursued in the Russian courts since 2012, when the first case against him was initiated. The following year, he received a sentence of five years, but it was cancelled within a day. This gave rise to conspiracy theories about his connections with the Kremlin.

In reality, though, the authorities had decided to allow him his freedom so he could continue his campaign in the 2013 Moscow mayoral election. The state wanted to see Navalny soundly beaten, hoping that he would receive a small percentage of the vote. But in the end, he took second place with 28% and, if not for the traditional falsifications, would have made it to the second round against the Kremlin-favoured incumbent, mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

In the years that followed, Navalny faced a series of embezzlement and fraud charges, which he was convicted on, too.

But the fact that he had become the Kremlin’s Enemy No. 1 became clear after the attempt to poison him in 2020. Miraculously, Navalny survived. The authorities (by which I mean Putin) allowed him to fly to Germany, confident that no traces of poison could be found on the plane. But poison was found. Then, one of the men behind the attempted assassination confessed during a telephone call with Navalny himself.

When Navalny announced his return to Russia at the end of 2020, Putin made his final decision on the opposition leader: to put him in jail for a long time, if not forever. Of course, no one except the president has the right to approve such an important decision in Russia.

And now, in the new trial against Navalny, we are witnessing Putin’s plans being put into action. Do not focus on the new accusations and the charges against him. There’s absolutely nothing in them: if Putin had ordered Navalny to be charged with 30 separate offences, the investigators would have done it. The investigators’ orders are much simpler, though: they need a conviction on charges that will ensure a long-term prison sentence.

Navalny’s new trial is being held behind closed doors for two reasons. Firstly, to solve some practical problems for the Kremlin – preventing Navalny from being allowed to turn the court into a platform for political and anti-war statements. And secondly, to intimidate Navalny’s active and visible supporters, most of whom have been forced to emigrate.

The latter is also why the former technical director of Navalny’s YouTube channel, Daniel Kholodnyi, is being judged alongside him, and why on the eve of Navalny's trial, Lilia Chanysheva, who headed the politician’s headquarters in the western Russian city of Ufa, was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison on 14 June. Chanysheva was convicted for participating in an ‘extremist community’, which is what the authorities deem Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) to be.

Despite the fact that any protest in Russia is now doomed to brutal suppression, the authorities still remember that there have been large opposition rallies in the country in the past ten years. While Russia’s landmark 2011 protests against falsified elections failed, in part, because of a lack of clear leadership, protests started to gain momentum after Navalny’s team took up the mantle of organising in 2014.

At the end of 2016, Navalny announced his intention to participate in Russia’s 2018 presidential election. It was clear in advance that he would likely not be allowed to run. His conviction in a previous criminal case was used to prohibit him, despite the fact that it was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights before the election. Nevertheless, he ran an exciting campaign: before his official registration was refused, he travelled to different regions of the country and gathered hundreds, if not thousands, of supporters. In Russia, where Putin's regime has rolled any opposition activity into the asphalt, this seemed unbelievable. It led conspiracy theorists to once again raise questions about Navalny’s connection with the authorities.

The assassination decision

Judging by the thorough investigation into Navalny’s poisoning, the decision to assassinate him was made during his presidential campaign. Putin’s motive will likely be determined by historians, although in my heart I hope investigators will do it before then. But it can be assumed that the president perceived Navalny’s campaigning trips around the country as a direct challenge and his growing number of supporters as dangerous competition. We can also assume that Putin was already thinking about invading Ukraine at that time. His strategic goal, therefore, was to prevent mass protests inside the country.

But Navalny survived the Kremlin’s poisoning and came to his senses in Germany. In general, the departure of prominent opponents of the Putin regime does not bother the Russian authorities at all. This is probably reasonable: it is very difficult to stay relevant in politics when you’re in exile.

I have no doubt that when Navalny decided to return to Russia, he was thinking about Garry Kasparov and other opposition politicians who had gone abroad, including Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who served ten years in prison and later tried to create opposition and media structures in Russia from abroad. But his example can hardly be called successful. A Russian opposition politician should be in Russia, is presumably what Navalny thought.

His ally, Ilya Yashin, was guided by the same logic. Yashin, despite all the threats, refused to leave the country and received eight and a half years in prison for calling the war crimes of the Russian army in Bucha exactly that – crimes.

Navalny continues to conduct political activities in prison, and the authorities continue to interfere with him as much as possible. The conditions he is being held in are consistently deteriorating. He is not provided with effective medical assistance, and the prison administration tries to make things worse for him, placing him in a punishment cell for the slightest formal offence, such as unbuttoning the top button on his shirt or saying an obscene word. Prison officers placed a man who does not wash in a cell with him, while in the next cell is a person who screams loudly all day long, probably due to mental illness. Navalny is also forbidden to write letters or use writing materials.

In response, Navalny has filed countless complaints and sued the prison administration – of course, he has lost all these cases, but he continues to fight. Just a few days after his current trial began, Navalny’s complaint over not being allowed writing materials was considered by the Supreme Court of Russia. Navalny cited the ‘Nelson Mandela rules’, a set of UN practices that say prisoners cannot be prohibited from writing complaints and working with documents. In court, even the representative from the Ministry of Justice, which monitors how prison sentences are served, and the judge seemed sincerely surprised by the ban.

Despite what appeared to be sympathy on the part of the judge, the decision was predictable. Navalny’s complaint was denied. He has been facing this attitude for at least ten years. One of his most famous phrases was delivered in court, addressed to judges and prosecutors, “who understand everything, but look at the table”. The judge of the Russian Supreme Court understood everything. But he also ruled against Navalny.

There is little doubt that Navalny’s prison sentence will be similar to Mandela’s 27 years. From prison, Navalny, like Mandela, is trying to fight not only for his own rights, but also for the rights of millions of Russian citizens who do not agree to live in a dictatorship. Repression and apathy in Russia mean their voice is not heard now. But this does not mean that these people don’t exist. And Navalny is their leader. Navalny himself understands this. Putin understands this. Everyone understands everything – including the extreme threats to Navalny’s life and health while he is in a Russian prison.

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