In the course of Vladimir Putin’s crackdown on dissent, three attorneys who previously represented the late Russian opposition leader; Alexei Navalny have been imprisoned.
A court in Petushki, a town about 60 miles east of Moscow, sentenced Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin, and Alexei Liptser to three and a half to five years in prison. The government accused them of being involved with extremist groups, which led to their imprisonment in October 2023.
Many believed that the lawsuit was an attempt to put further pressure on the opposition to deter defence attorneys from taking on political cases. Navalny had been incarcerated for 19 years at the time for a number of crimes, including radicalism. He passed away in a Russian prison camp in February 2023.
In his last court appearance on January 10, Kobzev stated that “we are being tried for transmitting Navalny’s thoughts to other people,” according to the independent Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta. After a 2021 verdict that banned Navalny’s organizations—the Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of regional offices—as extremist groups, his networks were labelled as such.
Kremlin critics denounced that decision as politically motivated and intended to suppress Navalny’s activities, as it exposed everyone associated with the organisations to punishment. Authorities accused the attorneys of using their position to relay information from Navalny to his team, according to Navalny’s associates.
A vocal opponent of President Vladimir Putin and an anti-corruption activist, Navalny was arrested in 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was