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The already jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny reports that the state has brought up new charges against him: calls for terrorism and extremism, financing of extremist activities, and the rehabilitation of Nazism. According to the Investigative Committee, he committed all of the offenses from within the prison. The prosecution asks for another jail sentence of up to 30 years long.
Navalny writes he has already received a notification about the new criminal case initiated against him:
“I am a genius of the underworld. Professor Moriarty is no match for me. You all thought I had been isolated in prison for two years, but it turns out I was actively committing crimes. Luckily, the Investigative Committee was vigilant and didn't miss a thing,” the politician wrote. “Isn't it awesome? Rarely has a criminal done as much on the outside as I have done while behind bars. The only thing that casts a shadow on my smugness is the fact that these achievements aren't just my own, but also the work of my accomplices: Leonid Volkov, Ivan Zhdanov, Liliya Chanysheva. I am the leader of a criminal group, and they follow my orders.”
According to Navalny, the notification suggests that the Nazi propaganda charges are based on his associate Leonid Volkov's utterance in a Popular Politics broadcast: “Colonel Stauffenberg was right to try to kill Hitler, he must have been killed.”
“From the point of view of the Investigative Committee and Putin, Hitler was the legitimate authority, and blowing him up was an act of extremism,” Navalny explains. “Everything else follows the same line. All the programs on Popular Politics are terror and extremism conducted under my leadership.”
As Team Navalny member Ivan Zhdanov told The Insider, this is most likely “a new episode in the extremist group case”. To remind you, on June 1, Alexei Navalny was charged with founding an extremist group, and on September 28, similar charges were brought up against Leonid Volkov and Ivan Zhdanov.