Alexei Navalny’s five-year prison sentence on fabricated charges removes Vladimir Putin’s
last political opponent from the scene. Navalny was charged with
stealing a small amount of money during the course of giving pro-bono
legal advice to a regional government on the sale of timber.
Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption blogger
and activist, was one of the key organizers of anti-Putin demonstrations
following the disputed parliamentary and presidential elections of
December 2011 and March 2012. He had been a thorn in the side of the
Putin machine by exposing its high-level corruption on his blog, which
is followed by millions of Russians. He was indicted by Putin’s
Investigative Committee – an extrajudicial body that works like the
troikas of the Stalin era. Among those exposed by Navalny for the theft
of billions were the very members of the Investigative Committee that
indicted him. Navalny coined the term widely applied by the Russian
people to Putin’s United Russia, as the “party of thieves and scoundrels.”
No comments:
Post a Comment