Alexei Navalny Expects Prison Term In Russia

By Katie Stallard, Moscow Correspondent

The trial of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has resumed today in the provincial town of Kirov, 1,000 km northeast of Moscow.

The 36-year-old blogger claims the case has been personally ordered by Vladimir Putin to discredit his anti-corruption work and disqualify him from running for public office.

Navalny recently announced he wants to run for the presidency and change the way Russia is ruled, but a guilty verdict in Kirov would bar him from standing and could see him sent to prison for up a decade.

He is accused of embezzling 16m rubles (£330,000) from a state-owned timber company in Kirov, when he worked as an adviser to the regional governor here in 2009.

The blogger believes Vladimir Putin is behind the case

Navalny has published his accounts from the time on his blog, which he says clearly prove his innocence, nevertheless he fully expects to be convicted and is preparing himself for jail.

The judge presiding over his trial has yet to return a 'not guilty' verdict, putting him slightly above the national judicial average of a 99% conviction rate.

Speaking ahead of his first hearing last week, Navalny told reporters: "I'm absolutely sure it will end in a guilty verdict.

"They've already decided everything, including the sentence.

"They're interested in some kind of public relations, to say on television that the man who for years has been accusing us of corruption is corrupt himself. By them, I mean Putin."

President Putin's spokesman has declined to comment on the case.

Navalny has been campaigning against corruption by state officials and companies since 2007, but it was his role in mass street protests following disputed election results in 2011 that brought him to prominence, and to the attention of the Kremlin.

A trained lawyer with an ear for a soundbite, Navalny coined the slogan "party of crooks and thieves" for Vladimir Putin's United Russia and labelled the president himself "Chief Thief", firing up a new generation of young, internet-savvy protesters and earning himself a rock star following among the opposition.

His anti-corruption investigations have since claimed the scalps of several of Vladimir Putin's allies, including the head of his parliamentary Ethics Committee, who resigned after claims published on the Navalny's blog.

The father-of-two has said he does not want to go to prison, but is not afraid to do so, and has already planned what he will take with him; from velcro trainers (the laces would be confiscated) and slippers, to photos of his family to tape to the wall.

He said: "If you get into opposition politics, they can put you in jail. If you take on corruption, the easiest thing for these people is to put you in jail.

"Putin and his inner circle have realised that they have no levers left at their disposal to keep control of the political system except repression.

"They see the decline in (Putin's) ratings and the growing discontent, and the protests continue... They will crush anyone who objects to Putin being president for life."

Navalny's case has been compared to that of Mikhail Khodorkovsky - once one of the richest men in Russia, the former oligarch was jailed in 2005 on charges of embezzlement and is still behind bars in a Siberian prison camp.

Khodorkovksy's lawyers maintain the case against him was fabricated after he strayed from the realm of business into politics.

But the former tycoon has continued to campaign from his prison cell, and jailing Navalny runs a similar risk of uniting opposition protesters behind him and turning him into a popular martyr.

An independent poll last month found only 37% of Russians knew who Alexei Navalny was, but that is a substantial increase on 6% two years ago.

It's a significant proportion for a man without access to the mechanism of state-controlled media in Russia.

The gamble for the authorities is that the trial, and presumably conviction, of Alexei Navalny, will only boost his popularity and give him a new platform from which to campaign.

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