KIROV, Russia — Aleksei A. Navalny, a lawyer who became Russia’s most
resonant opposition voice by crusading against rampant public corruption
and a personal irritant to President Vladimir V. Putin by branding his
United Russia political machine as the “party of swindlers and thieves,”
was found guilty on Thursday of stealing money from a state-controlled
timber company.
He was sentenced to five years in prison — a punishment that immediately
transformed Mr. Navalny, 37, who recently declared his candidacy for
mayor of Moscow, from an opposition activist to a political dissident
and prisoner. Joining the storied ranks of Russian dissidents, Mr.
Navalny was the first to use the Internet and social media as his main
weapon against the state.
Mr. Navalny’s co-defendant, Pyotr Ofitserov, a businessman and
acquaintance who worked with him on the timber project, was sentenced to
four years in prison. The two men, who had been accused of embezzling
nearly $500,000, were also each fined more than $15,000.
Much of the judge’s findings was based on the testimony of a third man
accused in the scheme, Vyacheslav Opalev, who pleaded guilty and worked
with the prosecution. In his decision, Judge Sergei Blinov called his
testimony trustworthy and reliable. But during the trial, Mr. Opalev at
times gave contradictory evidence, and defense lawyers were not allowed
to cross-examine him. In addition, Judge Blinov barred the defense from
calling 13 witnesses.
The verdict immediately reverberated throughout the highest levels of
Russian government and society and even sparked some calls for boycotts
of the Moscow mayoral election and future national ballots. Aleksei L.
Kudrin, a close associate of Mr. Putin and former finance minister,
described it on Twitter as “looking less like a punishment than an
attempt to isolate him from social life and the electoral process.”
The crime novelist Boris Akunin, who is also a political opposition
leader, said the verdict showed there was little hope to change Russia
by democratic means. “Lifetime deprivation of elections — this is what
the verdict means not only for Navalny but for all who thought it was
possible to change this system through elections,” Mr. Akunin wrote. “As
long as the Putin regime is alive, there will not be elections. The
answer to the question ‘to be, or not to be’ that is to boycott or not
boycott, has been answered. For other elections as well.”
Sergei Parkhomenko, a prominent Moscow radio host, said he had been
skeptical that Mr. Navalny would be sent to jail because his
imprisonment would undermine Russia’s electoral process.
“That’s in the past, it’s finished,” Mr. Parkhomenko wrote on Facebook.
“There will be no more elections without Navalny. There will not be a
legitimate mayor of Moscow without Navalny. There will not be a
legitimate mayor without Navalny among the live, real competitors.”
In the online world where Mr. Navalny was a singular voice with a knack
for zinging catchphrases, supporters noted that the verdict came on
Nelson Mandela’s 95th birthday and that the Kremlin had published an
official congratulatory message from the Mr. Putin to the former South
African leader even as Russia was about to make Mr. Navalny its own
political prisoner.
Mr. Navalny spent much of the court session defiantly posting commentary
on Twitter, including a pointed assertion that all of the evidence
against him had been fabricated. He ignored an order from the judge to
shut off cellphones. As Judge Blinov pronounced the sentence, after more
than three hours of reciting the facts of the case and reading his
decision, Mr. Navalny was still using his phone.
Mr. Navalny posted on Twitter: “Ok. Don’t miss me. And most importantly —
do not be lazy.” Referring to the Russian government, he added, “The
toad will not remove itself from the oil pipeline.”
As the five-year sentence was delivered, and the judge said that it
could not be suspended but required actual jail time, some of Mr.
Navalny’s supporters burst into tears. He was led away in handcuffs.
After the sentencing, Mr. Navalny's longtime press secretary, Anna
Veduta, sat on a bench in the courthouse with tears steaming down her
face. His wife, Yulia, sat beside her, dry-eyed and stone-faced but
slightly pale. They remained there for about 10 minutes before leaving
through a back exit.
Outside the court, Mrs. Navalny said her husband’s work would not be
halted and that he had been warned of a serious sentence by Sergei M.
Guriev, a prominent Russian economist and supporter of Mr. Navalny who
recently fled to France fearing for his own freedom.
“Aleksei was as ready for this as one can be,” Mrs. Navalny said. “If
anyone believes that Aleksei’s investigations will cease, that is not
the case. The Fund for the Fight Against Corruption will continue
working as before.”
However expected the jail term might have been, the personal cost is
steep. The Navalnys have two young children and at times during her
remarks, Mrs. Navalny choked back tears.
In Moscow, even before the sentence was announced, supporters and the
police began to gather at Manezh Square near the Kremlin where backers
of Mr. Navalny had planned to hold an unsanctioned rally. More than
7,000 people had responded to an announcement of the event on Facebook
to say that they would attend.
Before being led out of the courtroom by guards, Mr. Navalny turned and
hugged Mrs. Navalny and shook hands with some supporters.
The guilty verdict was widely expected and prosecutors had demanded a
six-year prison term. Unless it is reversed on appeal, which seemed
unlikely, the verdict stood to disqualify Mr. Navalny from the Moscow
mayoral election, which will be held in September. The incumbent, Sergei
S. Sobyanin, is widely favored to win.
At the headquarters of Mr. Navalny’s mayoral campaign in Moscow, several
dozen volunteers who had signed up in June after seeing posts on social
networking sites, glumly watched a live webcast from the court.
“Everybody is in shock,” Roman Rubanov, a deputy campaign manager said,
after watching Mr. Navalny hug his wife and be led away by bailiffs.
“Everybody was expecting the worst, of course. But it is one thing to
know it will happen and another to see how it actually happens.”
Mr. Rubanov added, “Everybody is amazed, bewildered and disappointed and women have tears in their eyes.”
Red balloons printed with the word “Navalny” festooned the headquarters.
A poster hung on the wall proclaiming his campaign slogan, “Change
Russia, start with Moscow” — a reference to Mr. Navalny’s previously
stated ambition of running for president one day. Stacks of fliers sat
on a bench.
Mr. Navalny was officially registered for the mayoral race on Wednesday
afternoon, less than 24 hours before his conviction. A convicted
criminal cannot run for public office in Russia but officials were still
sorting through the technicalities. Some said Mr. Navalny will not be
disqualified until after an initial appeal, which can take up to several
months. Leonid Volkov, his campaign manager, said the campaign has not
yet decided whether it will continue after Thursday’s verdict.
Supporters at the headquarters said the verdict was purely political.
“I’ve been following his activities for a long time and when I saw on
Facebook that he was looking for help, I volunteered,” Dmitri Slukin, a
29-year-old telecommunications industry manager who was at the
headquarters Thursday, said. The judge convicted his candidate, Mr.
Slukin said, because “the people in power are afraid of what Aleksei
does.”
Galina A. Koposova, a 20-year-old engineering student who volunteered to
help over the summer, said “it is obvious this case is political.
Navalny bothers Putin. He is a man who can really compete with Putin.”
Campaign workers followed Mr. Navalny’s Twitter messages from the
courtroom, which were dripping with his characteristic acerbic humor.
Lest anybody think he was shaken, Mr. Navalny posted a picture of
President Putin smiling and wrote, “I see that only we two are listening
to this verdict without unnecessary sadness.”
In the hours ahead of the verdict, Mr. Navalny was defiant. In a blog
post on Wednesday, he railed against the government. “The current power —
is not a healthy big fish, but a puffer fish or a Latin American toad,
which puffs itself up when it senses danger, using TV to spread lies
from prostitute TV hosts,” he wrote.
He also exhorted his supporters to continue his work even in his
absence. “You understand what is to be done, understand how it must be
done, and understand for what it must be done,” he wrote."The main thing
is be brave, to cast off laziness and do it. You actually don’t need
any sort of special leadership.”
“There is no one else but you,” he wrote in closing. “If you are reading this, you are the resistance.”
The charges that Mr. Navalny faced, dating from his brief role as an
adviser to the regional governor here, were considered shaky by some
observers. A previous investigation had resulted in them being thrown
out as baseless.
The Kremlin, however, made little effort to mask the political
motivation of prosecution. A spokesman for the federal Investigative
Committee, Vladimir Markin, declared publicly that Mr. Navalny had made a
target of himself through his political activities criticizing public
officials.
“If a person tries with all his strength to attract attention, or if I
can put it, teases authorities — ‘Look at me, I’m so good compared to
everyone else’ — well, then interest in his past grows and the process
of exposing him naturally speeds up,” Mr. Markin said.
Mr. Navalny arrived at the Leninsky Court here in downtown Kirov
Thursday looking tense and carrying a black duffel bag, presumably
containing personal items given the possibility that he could be sent to
jail immediately. His wife arrived with him, carrying two bottles of
water. Mr. Navalny clutched his own bottle of water with one hand at the
defense table. His other hand, predictably, held his smartphone, and
even as the judge continued reading, Mr. Navalny was posting on Twitter.
In a message from the court, he mocked the stack of paper Judge Blinov
was reading from “even with text on both sides,” Mr. Navalny wrote. His
wife stood in the second row, wearing an elegant red skirt and white
blazer, and smiled tightly as she also tapped on her phone. At one
point, Mr. Navalny looked at one of the cameras providing a live feed
from the courtroom and flashed his pinkie and index fingers in a sort of
victory sign.
Several leaders of the political opposition traveled from Moscow to be
in the courthouse, including Ilya V. Ponomarev and Dmitry G. Gudkov, who
are members of the Russian Parliament, and Ilya Yashin, who along with
Mr. Navalny helped organize a series of big street protests in Moscow
after disputed parliamentary elections in December 2011.
Judge Blinov interrupted the reading of his decision to note that half
of the courtroom was sending messages and he ordered that all phones be
turned off. No one obeyed, certainly not Mr. Navalny who posted another
message on Twitter joking that he was trying to convince everyone
standing in his row to do the wave — as in a stadium crowd — “while
trying not to talk.”
As the verdict was delivered in Kirov, 600 miles away, Grigory Saksonov,
57, an electrician looking for work, was standing on Manezh Square in
Moscow holding a sign that said : “Judge Blinov, you’re a donkey.” He
was stunned to learn that Mr. Navalny received five years; saying he had
expected a suspended sentence. “If it’s a real sentence, then it is
two-faced meanness. So, Navalny will sit in jail, and the government
will feast its eyes.” He added, “It was always a political process, even
from the beginning.”