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RUSSIAN OPPOSITION LEADER Alexei Navalny has said he is facing new criminal accusations that could extend his current nine-year prison term.
Navalny said on Instagram that an investigator visited him in prison to say the authorities had opened a new investigation against him on charges of “creating an extremist group to fan hatred against officials and oligarchs” and trying to stage unsanctioned rallies.
He said that the charges could keep him in prison for another 15 years if he is convicted.
Navalny, the most determined political opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested in January 2021 on return from Germany and handed a two-and-a-half-year sentence for a parole violation.
He had been recuperating in Germany from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
In March, he was sentenced to nine years on fraud and contempt of court charges.
He rejected the charges as politically motivated, a move that signalled an attempt by the authorities to keep him behind bars for as long as possible.
The new sentence followed a year-long Kremlin crackdown on his supporters, other opposition activists and independent journalists in which authorities appear eager to stifle all dissent.
Navalny’s close associates have faced criminal charges and left the country, and his group’s political infrastructure — an anti-corruption foundation and a nationwide network of regional offices — has been destroyed after being labelled an extremist organisation.
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Ahhhh to remember those here during the pandemic continuosly crying out that we were living in a police state, led by fascists that were were destroying our freedumb…..because we had to wear a mask, queue to shop, couldnt go to the pub, couldn’t invite our buddies over, stay within 2km of the gaff and wash our hands. The likes of Russia, Belarus, Turkey, North Korea were always an unknown to them.
@Paul Furey: — I’ve seen no comments from any of those people that don’t show a deep love and affection for Putin. It’s a strange phenomenon.
@Paul Furey: jaysus a lot of people living in you’re head. Get over yourself bud.
@Bobby Jones: no one does actually…but hey it’s what you believe, so that’s grand.
@Paul Furey: The most important difference between a democracy and a dictatorship is that people have the rights to challenge the government on its actions at anytime and protest against what they feel is government overreach.
In the countries that you list and others, those rights do not exist and those in power silence all opposition by making expressing or organising opposition a crime, along with any act of protest.
In the majority of those dictatorships there were previous points in history where freedoms to express opposition and protest did exist, but they were removed, often incrementally, until it became normal for people to not express opposition, but to comply either out of fear or because they had become so conditioned, the very concept of protest didn’t exist.
It is the duty of citizens within a democracy to express their objections to anything they view as government overreach or injustice, because those in government have a duty to be held to account in all aspects of how they govern.
Simply because, unquestioning blind adherence to an ideology, regime, or leader is how all current and past dictatorships began and people that truly trust in democracy, neither object to or ridicule protest, they embrace it as part of the system of checks and balances of a functioning democracy.
We don’t realise how luck we are,I pray I’m around to watch the fall of Putin and Russia Slava Ukraine
@David Harries: you won’t be.
@Bobby Jones: Why not? Can you tell the future?
@Bobby Jones: Slava Ukraine comrad
Documentary Navalney made about himself was brilliant viewing, great television. The love he had for Russia unfortunately sent him back there. RELEASE HIM NOW.
Why did he leave Germany in ’21? Surely this couldn’t have surprised him.
Unfortunately doubt he’ll ever get out
@Sam Kendlin Hobbs: Because he has more courage than all of us combined.
@Seán Ó Briain: His wife and family probably rather he didn’t. A tragic case that is unfortunately a lost cause. The war in Ukraine shows the Russia and the world what Putin really is, which is largely what Navalny was trying to achieve. Now Navalny will spend possibly an unending sentence somewhat unnecessarily as the world’s attentions are focused elsewhere, by the time the war is over, Navalny will be just another inmate.
Putin will be gone soon and then a new Russia will emerge
Of course he is -surprise, surprise
have your say