The 47-year-old Kremlin critic died in an Arctic prison colony on Friday
Moscow:
Russian courts have handed down short prison terms to dozens of people detained at events commemorating Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, with 154 people sentenced in St. Petersburg alone, official court announcements showed.
Details of the rulings released by the city’s courts on Saturday and Sunday showed that 154 people were sentenced to jail terms of up to 14 days for violating Russia’s strict anti-protest laws.
Human rights groups and independent media reported a number of similar verdicts in other cities across the country.
The 47-year-old Kremlin critic died on Friday at an Arctic prison colony where he was being held on charges widely seen as retaliation for his campaign against President Vladimir Putin.
Over the weekend, police arrested hundreds of Russians in dozens of cities who came to pay their respects to the victim of Stalin-era repression, laying flowers and lighting candles.
Anti-Kremlin demonstrations or public opposition to the regime are effectively illegal in Russia under strict military censorship rules and laws against unauthorized gatherings.
Over the weekend, police and plainclothes men patrolled locations where people gathered to commemorate Navalny in dozens of Russian cities.
There were several reports that they removed the makeshift monuments overnight, and video showed masked men scooping flowers into garbage bags on a bridge next to the Kremlin, said Boris Nemzo, another leading critic of Putin. Boris Nemtsov was killed in the Kremlin in 2015.
Putin is silent
News of Navalny’s death came just a month before Putin was set to win a six-year term in the Kremlin, sparking grief and anger among his supporters at home and abroad.
Russian authorities on Sunday still had not allowed Navalny’s mother or lawyers access to his body, angering his supporters who earlier called the Russian state a “killer” trying to “cover their tracks.”
Putin has not commented on the death of his most vocal critic, and the Kremlin has not said anything since Friday night when it criticized Western leaders for saying they were holding Putin accountable.
Tributes to Navalny continued to pour in on Sunday. Navalny narrowly survived a poisoning attack in 2020, only to fly back to Russia months later but knowing he would be imprisoned.
“Alexei Navalny wants a very simple thing: to make his beloved Russia a normal country,” said Leonid Volko, his chief of staff and one of his closest aides. Hu wrote on the X social media site.
“For this, Vladimir Putin killed him. Poisoned him, imprisoned him, tortured him and then killed him.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
