A Russian court handed down a guilty verdict on Thursday morning to the opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a Moscow mayoral candidate and vocal Kremlin critic, sentencing him to five years in jail on embezzlement charges.
The court, in the city of Kirov, about 900 kilometers (560 miles) east of Moscow, found Navalny guilty of organizing an embezzlement scheme that cost a local state-owned company, KirovLes, some $500,000, by forcing it to sell timber at below-market prices when he served as an unpaid advisor to the Kirov Region’s governor in 2009.
Navalny, who has denounced the case as politically motivated, was handcuffed by court marshals and led out of the courtroom shortly after the judge announced the sentence, RIA Novosti reports.
Western leaders have reacted to the verdict very negatively. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton, has expressed her concern at Navalny’s ruling and expressed hope that it will be revised in a higher court. "This outcome, taking into account procedural deficiencies, raises serious questions about the state of the rule of law in Russia," RIA Novosti quotes her statement.
“We are deeply disappointed in the conviction of Navalny and the apparent political motivations in this trial,” the US Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul wrote in his Twitter on Thursday.
The experts of Vestnik Kavkaza have disagreed on the political content of the event. Thus, Sergey Tikhomirov warned against any comments on the process, saying that the court should make comments and only lawyers have full access to evidence-based prosecution.
"I do not have any inside information. To operate on the data that is in open access, what is there to say? The court made the decision. If the defense disagrees, it may file an appeal," the expert said.
The chief editor of Vestnik Kavkaza, Alexei Vlasov, in turn stressed that the sentence cannot be taken out of its political context. "This means that the Kremlin, on the eve of the election campaign in the regions, particularly the elections for the mayor of Moscow, is ready to go on the most harsh scenario, thereby cutting off the opposition candidates," he explained.
"Now it is clear that Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin will have no real competitors in the election. Ivan Melnikov will gain some votes, but "project Navalny" seemed more promising, given the oppositional mood of the Moscow electorate. Political scientists have no doubts about Sobyanin's victory, but without Navalny there will be no intrigue," Vlasov said.
