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 Navalny led mass protests against President Vladimir Putin three
years ago, when tens of thousands took to the streets in Moscow and
St Petersburg to protest against corruption in his government and
inner circle. Opposition figures say jailing Navalny risked a new
wave of protests and so it was decided to punish him by jailing his
brother instead.
Navalny’s supporters will gather in front of the Kremlin later on
Tuesday with some 17,000 people having registered on Facebook to
attend although the numbers may be smaller as people prepare to
celebrate the New Year. The authorities have not given permission
for the rally so it is considered illegal and there maybe arrests.
The Navalny brothers, Alexei and Oleg, were accused of stealing 30
million rubles, around $500,000 at the current exchange rate, from
two firms including an affiliate of the French cosmetics company
Yves Rocher between 2008 and 2012.
Tuesday's ruling will come as a relief for Navalny's supporters
after prosecutors asked that he be imprisoned for 10 years. The
Kremlin denies allegations that it uses the courts to persecute
opponents.
 Officials have taken few steps to investigate Navalny's corruption
allegations. He claimed there was mass embezzlement, including in
state bank VTB and pipeline monopoly Transneft, run by close allies
of Putin.
"Aren't you ashamed of what you are doing?" Navalny told the court
and judge Yelena Korobchenko. "Why are you putting him (my brother
Oleg) in prison? To punish me even harder?"
Currently under house arrest, Alexei Navalny is serving another
suspended five-year jail term for a separate conviction last year,
which critics also called a sham.
"The authorities are torturing and destroying relatives of their
political opponents. This regime doesn't deserve to exist, it must
be destroyed," Navalny told reporters outside the court as he was
escorted in a car for prisoners.
Russian state television channels were not covering the sentencing
or mentioned it very briefly, while most Russian print media or
radio stations had it among their top stories.
Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov declined to comment and said the
president would find out about the verdict from media.
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Putin's popularity has soared over the past year after Moscow's
annexation of Ukraine's Russian-speaking Crimea peninsula and its
incursion in east Ukraine, which led to the worst stand-off with the
West since the end of the Cold War. This has eroded the popularity
of opposition leaders such as Navalny.
However, falling oil prices and Western sanctions on Russia over
Ukraine have triggered a deep economic crisis, a rouble devaluation
and double-digit inflation, threatening Putin's reputation for
safeguarding Russian prosperity.
Former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, one of the most respected
Russian economists in the West, said this month Russia was facing a
full-fledged crisis which could lead to mass protests next year.
"The authorities could have easily put Navalny in jail. But they
understand that it would have led to a large wave of protests. So
they will torture him through other means," economist and former
central banker turned opposition figure, Sergei Aleksashenko, told
independent television channel Dozhd.
Lawyers for Oleg Navalny said they didn't know where exactly he
would be sent to serve his prison term. Putin's critic and
billionaire Mikhail Khodorkovsky served his 10-year jail term in
penal colonies from northern Russia to east Siberia.
(Writing by Dmitry Zhdannikov; Editing by Dominic Evans and Anna
Willard)
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