Throughout his prison ordeal over the past 1,000 days, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has communicated with the outside world by passing messages through his lawyers, who met with him periodically in various jails and detention centers. Messages from Mr. Navalny, who has been forced into solitary confinement for more than 200 days and is suffering from physical ailments, have been sharp and often acerbic. But now, Russian President Vladimir Putin is attempting to cut off Mr. Navalny’s lifeline — further isolating him from the world.
On Oct. 13, Russian authorities raided the apartments of three lawyers representing him: Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexey Liptser. They were then detained under suspicion of “being member of an extremist community,” for which they could face up to six years in prison. Russia has labeled Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption organization an “extremist” group, a label that has been applied to many groups Mr. Putin wants to silence. Separately, independent media reported a raid at a law firm that employs another Navalny lawyer, Olga Mikhailova, but she was out of the country.
“This is an act of intimidation with a clear intention to strengthen Navalny’s isolation from the outer world,” said Mr. Navalny’s associate, Leonid Volkov.
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Another lawyer, Alexander Fedulov, was scheduled to arrive this week at Mr. Navalny’s penal colony near Vladimir, outside of Moscow, to help him with a lawsuit he had filed against the prison. Mr. Fedulov did not show up for the hearing, and later said he had fled Russia.
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A retired teacher in Saudi Arabia, Muhammad al-Ghamdi, has been sentenced to death by the country’s Specialized Criminal Court solely based on his tweets, retweets and YouTube activity, according to Human Rights Watch. The court’s verdict, July 10, was based on two accounts on X, formerly Twitter, which had only a handful of followers. The posts criticized the royal family. The sentence is the latest example of dictatorships imposing harsh sentences on people who use social media for free expression, highlighted in our February editorial.
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Mr. Navalny, a lawyer, became the leading opposition figure to Mr. Putin by campaigning against corruption in the Kremlin and among Mr. Putin’s cronies. He championed political action, seeking to run candidates in local elections, and in a series of powerful films, his anti-corruption foundation exposed regime excesses, such as a huge, ornate palace built for Mr. Putin. In August 2020, Russian security services attempted to assassinate Mr. Navalny using a military-grade nerve agent. He survived and recovered from the attack in Germany. Upon his return, he faced a new ordeal: arrest on specious charges of fraud, a trial rigged against him and prison sentence of 11½ years. In August, he was tried on new charges of extremism and sentenced to an additional 19 years.
According to Mr. Volkov, Mr. Navalny will be transferred from Vladimir to a new maximum-security penal facility soon because of the recent sentence. “But his lawyers will not be able to visit him there or even to find out his whereabouts if they’re locked up themselves,” he said. “Terrifying.”
The attack on the lawyers is a blatant and illegal attempt to send Mr. Navalny into a black hole, hoping he will not be heard from again. It cannot succeed, and it won’t as long as the world continues to insist, loud and clear: Mr. Navalny is not forgotten and should walk free.
