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Alexei Navalny released from custody Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny released from custody
(about 4 hours later)
A Russian court has temporarily released the opposition leader Alexei Navalny from custody, but placed him under travel restrictions, as he awaits the outcome of an appeal against his five-year jail sentence. The Russian opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was unexpectedly released from custody on Friday, one day after thousands of Russians marched on the Kremlin to protest against a decision to send him to jail.
Prosecutors unexpectedly asked for Navalny to be allowed to wait for the appeal decision at home in Moscow after his conviction on embezzlement charges. The move appeared to signal the Kremlin's concern over the revived protests, or elite infighting over how to deal with a man who has gained increasing popularity through his opposition to the regime of Vladimir Putin.
The move could be intended to appease opposition activists. On Thursday night, thousands of Russians flooded the main arteries leading to the Kremlin, demanding his freedom and calling for the ousting of the president, Vladimir Putin. Dozens were detained. One day after sentencing him to five years in jail on charges of embezzlement, which Navalny's supporters called politically motivated, a judge in the provincial city of Kirov approved a rare prosecution request to release him from police custody during the appeal process.
Navalny was taken from the courtroom in handcuffs on Thursday after the judge, Sergei Blinov, ended a three-hour verdict reading by finding him guilty. He hugged his wife, Yulia, and was led away by police. Navalny hugged his wife upon his release and was due to arrive in Moscow from Kirov, 500 miles away, on Saturday morning.
An anti-corruption activist who became the most popular figure to emerge from protests that erupted around Putin's return to the Kremlin last year, Navalny was accused of embezzlement and a handful of other charges, after Putin unleashed a crackdown on the opposition in the wake of his inauguration. He thanked his supporters, thousands of whom flooded the streets of Moscow and other big cities on Thursday night. Around 200 people were detained in Moscow after an hours-long protest that centred on Manezh Square, just outside the Kremlin's walls.
Navalny has built a large following via corruption investigations into Putin's closest allies that he publicises on his popular social media accounts and blogs. On Tuesday, just two days before the verdict hearing, he released an investigation into alleged corruption at Russian Railways, one of Russia's largest state-run firms, headed by a close Putin ally, Vladimir Yakunin. He has dubbed Putin Russia's "main thief". "Thank you to everyone, that with your decisiveness you forced them to free me and Petya," Navalny wrote in a blog post, referring to his co-defendant Petr Ofitserov, sentenced to four years in prison and also released from custody on Friday.
The verdict against Navalny – that he embezzled 16m roubles (£325,000) from a timber firm while advising the governor of Russia's Kirov region – is widely seen as a means of silencing him. "It doesn't matter if this is temporary or not," Navalny wrote. "People decide their own fate."
He was sentenced alongside a co-defendant, Petr Ofitserov, who was given four years in jail. Ofitserov's wife, and the mother of his five children, sobbed uncontrollably after the sentence was handed down. Navalny plans to appeal the verdict, which found him guilty of embezzling 16m roubles from a timber firm while advising the Kirov region's governor in 2009. The trial and sentencing were widely seen as a means of silencing Navalny, who has won a large following by exposing corruption inside the Russian government. He is the most popular opposition leader to have emerged from mass street protests that shook Moscow last year as Putin prepared to return to the presidency following four years as prime minister.
As the verdict was being read, Ofitserov wrote on his Facebook page: "I'm getting lots of messages saying: 'hold on, hold on'. Thanks everyone for the support – it helps. But if they jail people like us, then we're not the ones who will have to hold on. It's bad in the cage, but at least it's honest. You'll have to make a more difficult choice – either you're with them or with yourselves." The US, UK and EU had all expressed concern over the verdict.
In Moscow, the centre of last year's anti-Putin protests, Russians erupted in anger at the verdict. Thousands occupied Tverskaya, the main street leading to the Kremlin, as riot police and special forces attempted to break up the gathering. Protesters shouted "Freedom!" and erupted into applause as cars honked in solidarity. Navalny's release will now allow him to continue to take part in the race for Moscow mayor, with elections due to be held in early September. He had to suspend his candidacy in the wake of the verdict.
In a statement released after the verdict, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man and now its best-known political prisoner, wrote that it was "inevitable and predictable" because of Russia's long history of jailing political opponents. Khodorkovsky was arrested 10 years ago on economic charges widely seen to be punishment for his wealth and ability to challenge Putin. But some observers fear the surprise move was a further means of discrediting Navalny, allowing him to take part in the Moscow mayoral vote, before losing and being sent to prison as both a convicted criminal and a political failure.
"[Until] we realise that the trials of Navalny, Bolotnaya and hundreds of thousands of other guiltlessly convicted people are our trials, they are just going to keep on locking us up, one at a time," he wrote. "The era of unbelief and indifference is ending." Navalny has won growing support among Russia's urban, internet-connected youth. Yet a recent poll by the Levada Centre, an independent pollster, said his support in the mayoral election stood at only 4%.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, issued a rare statement to condemn the verdict against Navalny, saying it "proves that we have no independent judiciary". "Everything has fallen into place," wrote Sergei Parkhomenko, a popular journalist and opposition activist. "There are indeed two groups: one, quite powerful, but still subordinate, has its clear reasoning that Navalny should take part in elections," he wrote. "They will be ready to risk watching with horror day by day as Navalny's rating grows."
The Russian elite also expressed shock and anger at the verdict. The second, Parkhomenko wrote, was more powerful and sought to rule by fear. "They dream of confusing us and ruining us," Parkhomenko wrote. "The most important thing is not to lose strength."
Alexei Kudrin, a former finance minister who remains close to Putin, wrote on Twitter: "The verdict seems less like punishment and more like it is aimed at isolating him from society and from the election process."
Navalny, who largely appeals to Russia's internet-connected urban youth disillusioned with Putin's increasingly authoritarian politics, was waging a campaign for Moscow mayor in snap elections called for September. He was forced to withdraw his candidacy in the wake of the verdict.
If he serves the entire five-year sentence, he will be released from jail only after Russia's next presidential election, in 2018.
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