Putin Critic Alexei Navalny’s Campaigner Jailed for Nine Years for Being an ‘Extremist’ – News18

An ally of jailed Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court for taking part in an “extremist” organisation, the Moscow Times said in a report.

Vadim Ostanin, the 46-year-old anti-Kremlin activist, was detained along with five other Navalny allies when the Kremlin blacklisted Navalny’s activist network as “extremist.”

Ostanin was the coordinator of Navalny’s political network in Barnaul, a city in Siberia.

In September 2021, Russian law enforcement opened a retroactive criminal case into Navalny’s network which led many members to flee Russia. The report said that prosecutors sought an 11-year prison sentence for Ostanin.

Ostanin said that his health deteriorated due to poor conditions in prison and said authorities mistreated him. Prominent human rights organisation Memorial recognized Ostanin as a political prisoner.

“Upon my arrival in Barnaul from Moscow, without explanation, I was placed in a solitary cell, about six square metres, in a basement with a window covered with debris. About a week later, the cell was flooded with ankle-deep water…In these cells there were rats, ants, spiders,” Ostanin wrote in a letter published by Navalny’s team.

Ostanin is the second person to be charged on similar “extremism” charges after another key Navalny ally, Liliya Chanysheva.

The legal team said that Ostanin was pressured into admitting his guilt but he refused.

Alexei Navalny is serving a sentence totalling almost 12 years in an alleged case of fraud in a penal colony. His supporters say these charges were trumped up to silence him.