Aleksei Navalny, Russian Opposition Leader, Calls Latest Charges ‘Unlawful’
3, 2017
MOSCOW — The legal troubles of Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most high-profile opposition leader, continued on Thursday with a court in
Moscow fining him the equivalent of almost $5,000 on charges of organizing a public event without permission from the authorities.
Mr. Navalny called Thursday’s verdict "unlawful." Leaving the courthouse, he told reporters: "If they fine us, we’ll carry on campaigning.
This time, Mr. Navalny found himself on trial for something far less attention-grabbing: the distribution of fliers by campaign volunteers on July 8
and 9, which the authorities defined as a "public event in a covert form" and say should have been approved by the government.
Gleb O. Pavlovsky, a political consultant who once worked for the Kremlin, told the Echo of Moscow radio station
that the crackdown was "an attempt to destroy the campaign machine" that Mr. Navalny is creating.
Throughout the proceedings, at the Simonov District Court in Moscow, Mr. Navalny
and his colleagues expressed disbelief on social media not just over the charge, but also the prosecutor’s chronology.
Mr. Navalny, the state claimed, had called on his supporters to participate in his event in a YouTube address at 8:18 p.m. on July 6.
The court also fined two of Mr. Navalny’s associates, Leonid M. Volkov, the chief of staff of his unsanctioned run for the Russian presidency,
and Nikolai N. Lyaskin, the coordinator of the campaign’s Moscow branch.
