Navalny’s lawyers jailed as Putin’s crackdown on dissent reaches new heights
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Alexei Navalny’s lawyers have been accused by Russian authorities of passing him information while he was in prison. Three lawyers who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to years in a Russian penal colony, as part of Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent that has reached levels unseen since Soviet times.
![[Mr Navalny, left, died in an Arctic penal colony last February. His wife Yulia, right, believes the Kremlin is behind his death]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/10/14/SEI192303408.jpg)
Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexei Liptser – already in custody – have been jailed from three-and-a-half to five years after being arrested in October 2023, charged with involvement with extremist groups, which is what the Russian state designates opposition groups as.
Before his sudden death in a penal colony last year – which Western leaders have blamed Putin for – Mr Navalny slammed the arrests of his lawyers as “outrageous”, describing it as a plan to further isolate him in jail. Despite his imprisonment, Mr Navalny was able via his lawyers to post on social media and file frequent lawsuits over his treatment in prison, using the resulting legal hearings as a chance to keep speaking out against the government and the war.
The trial, which was held behind closed doors, was widely seen as a means to discourage defence lawyers from supporting political dissidents in Russia. The lawyers were accused of enabling him to continue to function as the leader of an “extremist group”, even from behind bars, by passing his messages to the outside world.
