Alexei Navalny, a Kremlin critic, was sentenced to nine years in prison after a Russian court found him guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt of court.
On the charges, Russian prosecutors wanted to send Navalny to a maximum security prison for 13 years.
Mr Navalny, 45, was arrested in Russia in January 2021 after returning from Germany, where he was recovering from nerve agent poisoning, which he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny.
He is a vocal opponent of President Putin and is currently serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for stealing £3.5 million from his political organizations, which he denies.
Last month, he was retried on new fraud charges inside the maximum-security prison east of Moscow where he is being held.
Navalny stood next to his lawyers in a room full of prison security officers during the hearing as the judge read out the charges against him.
Navalny co-founded the Russia of the Future party nearly a decade ago to oppose President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia, fed up with corruption in the Russian government. He has a large social media following and has been arrested several times during anti-government protests.
Navalny was poisoned with Novichok nerve agent in August 2020, as part of a suspected assassination attempt. He spent a month in a Berlin hospital recovering.
Many of his closest allies have fled Russia since his arrest, citing multiple criminal charges. Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption, as well as a network of nearly 40 regional offices, have been declared “extremist” and he has been added to a list of terrorists.
