Russian anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny delivered a provocative speech at a courtroom in Moscow, where he addressed both President Vladimir Putin and the protest rallies across the country over the past two weekends.
Navalny’s appearance at Moscow city court on Tuesday came two days after protests in cities across Russia saw the detention of thousands of people taking to the streets and demanding his release. The previous Saturday, demonstrations took place in 120 cities.
The opposition leader was arrested at a Moscow airport last month after returning from Berlin, where he was treated for poisoning by nerve agent Novichok in an attack he said was ordered by Putin.
Prosecutors allege that Navalny violated the terms of a suspended sentence from 2014 in a darkening case that he said was politically motivated. His arrest on January 17 was due to alleged parole violations while he was in Germany.
During his court appearance on Tuesday, Navalny mocked Putin, saying that the president was trying to present himself as a politician, but that he was merely a ‘poisoner’.
Mikhail Svetlov / Getty Images
“There was Alexander the Liberator and Yaroslav the Wise. Now we will have Vladimir the Underwear Poisoner,” Navalny said, referring to his claim that Federal Security Service (FSB) agents placed Novichok in the lining of his blue underwear.
“The police stop me and half of Moscow is cordoned off because we have shown that he is demanding that he steal underwear from opponents and smear it with chemical weapons,” according to a transcript of the media website MediaZona.
He described the case against him as “fabricated” and said that the state was “trying to condemn me with the stubbornness of a possessed person.”
“It’s easy to lock me up. The most important thing in this process is to intimidate a large number of people. That’s how it works. They put one person behind bars to scare millions of people,” he added.
In his statement to the court, Navalny’s lawyer, Vadim Kobzev, described how the poisoning of his client was described as a ‘political Chernobyl’.
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / Getty Images
Kobzev ends his speech from the HBO series on the 1986 catastrophe at the nuclear power station. Referring to a remark by the actor interpreting one of the scientists, Valery Legasov, there was a warning about the consequences Navalny could have in prison in Russia.
“Legasov said, ‘Dyatlov broke all the rules and brought the reactor to self-destruction,'” Kobzev said. “No one in that control room knew that the power button would act as an igniter.” Dear judge, do not be like Dyatlov – do not push the button. ‘
Prosecutors want to commute the suspended sentence of Navalny to a three-and-a-half-year prison sentence, and the judge adjourned the case at 5:30 p.m. local time for deliberation.
Supporters of Navalny gathered near the court and according to OVD Info, 287 people were arrested at 17:00 local time.
The Kremlin has refuted international criticism of Navalny’s arrest and the suppression of protests and even accused the US of being behind the protests.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the presence of foreign diplomats during Navalny’s trial showed Western interference in Russia’s internal affairs.
The Kremlin continues to deny responsibility for the poisoning of Navalny and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the lack of evidence showed it could be staged. according to local news reports.
Yuri Felshtinsky is a Russian security services expert and author of Inflating Russia, which he co-wrote with Alexander Litvinenko, the former FSB officer who was killed by Polonium poisoning in London in 2006, is a murder of the Kremlin.
He said the authorities did not want to release Navalny, especially since the FSB’s poisoning attempt had been completed on him, which posed a major problem for the Kremlin.
“With Navalny, they missed the moment,” he said. Newsweek last week. “They tried to poison him. It was a good time to poison him. They failed. Now they have to deal with the result of that particular failure.”
He added: “Since then he has become very popular, now everyone listens to him.”
Felshtinsky believed that Navalny posed a greater threat to Putin than Boris Nemtsov, the opposition figure who was shot dead outside the Kremlin’s walls in 2015.
“Navalny is appealing to different powers … he is fighting corruption and it is very popular. For Putin, the fact that he is popular is an indication that he is a great danger.
“The Kremlin does not think ‘we should deal with corruption, or we should really allow Navalny to form his party and make it part of the Russian parliament and discuss the situation openly and give him time on Russian state television.’
“This is not the direction they are going to take, oppression is the only thing they can use.”
The image below by Statista outlines Putin’s time in power.
