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Because the rebels sped towards Moscow on Saturday and Prigozhin launched audio messages declaring that he and his males had been “able to die” and would shoot any forces resisting them, Navalny was in a grim jail colony with no entry to the information, he stated, both on radio, tv or from different inmates.
“I can’t see different folks, and after I do I’m not allowed to speak to them,” Navalny wrote in a thread that his staff posted on Twitter.
So he had no concept that Putin was grappling along with his biggest disaster since he took energy in 1999 — the sort of upheaval that Navalny had lengthy predicted was the one method a change would happen in Russia’s authorities.
When his legal professionals advised him in regards to the disaster in court docket Monday, he wrote: “I believed it was some sort of new joke or web meme that hadn’t reached me but.”
“As a substitute the prosecutor got here in and we continued the trial through which I stand accused of forming a corporation to overthrow President Putin by violent means,” he wrote.
Navalny, already serving greater than 11 years in jail, faces a prolonged time period within the new trial, through which he’s charged with establishing an extremist group — his Anti-Corruption Basis (ACF) — which for years has uncovered the corruption that riddles the Russian state.
He additionally faces different prices within the trial, which is being held in secret, together with “rehabilitating Nazi ideology.”
“Whereas listening to those accusations, I regarded on the photograph of a roadblock with a grenade launcher in Moscow’s Yasenevo district,” Navalny wrote, referring to sandbag obstacles that had been swiftly constructed Saturday on the outskirts of the capital.
“Whereas listening to how the ACF are extremists who’re harmful for the nation, I examine how one group of Russian troops ‘took positions on the Oka River’ to defend themselves in opposition to one other group of Russian troops.”
Final yr, Russia banned the ACF and Navalny’s political community as “extremist,” setting the stage for the brand new trial.
One of many basis’s most notable investigations, “Putin’s Palace,” drew 127 million views, alleging corruption by the president. The Kremlin denied the report.
It was launched in 2021, two days after Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia from Germany, the place he had recovered from being poisoned with a banned chemical nerve agent. The State Division stated the assault was carried out by the Russian state. The Kremlin denied that as effectively.
In Putin’s weekend cope with Prigozhin, he agreed to drop insurgency prices in opposition to the Wagner chief if he moved to Belarus and took alongside any Wagner fighters who didn’t wish to both signal contracts with the Russian Protection Ministry or go dwelling.
On Tuesday, Putin admitted for the primary time that Wagner was “totally state-funded,” after years of protecting the mercenary group, which is technically unlawful in Russia, at arm’s size. Putin stated Prigozhin and Wagner had been paid about $2 billion a yr.
As Russia’s conflict in opposition to Ukraine drags on, Putin has cracked down mercilessly on critics of his authorities and opponents of the conflict.
One other outstanding opposition chief, and a Washington Put up contributor, Vladimir Kara-Murza, was convicted of treason in a closed trial in April and sentenced to 25 years in jail for opposing the conflict and talking about Russian massacres of Ukrainian civilians in Bucha. Different opposition figures have acquired phrases of greater than seven years.
Within the wake of the mutiny, the crackdown on vital voices gave the impression to be intensifying. On Wednesday, Russia’s Prosecutor Common declared the impartial Riga-based Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta Europe an “undesirable group,” making it against the law for any Russian within the nation or overseas to work for or cooperate with it.
Prosecutors stated the newspaper, whose editor in chief shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021, “threatens the foundations of the constitutional order and the safety of the state” — citing its reporting on conflict crimes dedicated by Russian forces in Ukraine, in addition to articles quoting Navalny and his organizations.
Navalny blamed Putin for the Wagner disaster, saying he had allowed the mercenary group to flourish: “It’s dictators and usurpation of energy that result in mess, weak authorities and chaos,” he wrote.
It was not the Russian opposition, the ACF or the West that shot down helicopters and introduced the nation to the brink of civil conflict, Navalny identified, including that Prigozhin additionally threatened Protection Minister Sergei Shoigu.
“It was Putin personally who did this, I remind you that he personally pardoned all these convicts who had been on their solution to assassinate Shoigu and whoever else they needed to kill,” Navalny wrote, referring to Wagner’s recruitment of prisoners, who had been pardoned by Putin in the event that they survived six months of preventing.
“The truth that Putin’s conflict may destroy and disintegrate Russia is now not a dramatic exclamation,” he wrote. “It’s not democracy, human rights and parliamentarism that make the regime weak and result in turmoil.”
Navalny has been positioned in punishment cells 15 occasions for minor offenses, comparable to undoing the highest button of his jail uniform or washing his fingers on the fallacious time. As his well being deteriorated and he misplaced weight, his staff expressed fears that authorities had been making an attempt to interrupt him or kill him.
He has been denied entry even to pen and paper by the Russian Supreme Courtroom.
“I’m not asking for further meals; I’m not asking for a Christmas tree to be put in my cell,” Navalny advised the court docket in an attraction rejected final week, in line with the Russian impartial information outlet Mediazona. “We’re speaking in regards to the fundamental human proper to have a pen within the cell and a sheet of paper to put in writing a letter to the court docket.”
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