Russia jails lawyers who worked for late opposition leader Alexei Navalny

Three lawyers who worked for the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been sentenced to up to five and a half years in prison on charges of participating in an “extremist organisation”.

Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Alexey Lipshar were arrested in October 2023 as Russian authorities stepped up pressure on the jailed Kremlin critic, who died suddenly in an Arctic prison colony last February.

He was tried behind closed doors in Petrushki, a town east of Moscow, and accused of “using his position” to pass on messages between Navalny and his associates.

Navalny condemned the case as similar to that in Soviet times and was indicative of “the state of the rule of law in Russia”.

According to independent reports, Igor Sergunin was the only one of the three to admit charges, and was given a light sentence of three and a half years.

Alexey Liptsar was sentenced to five years in a penal colony and Vadim Kobzev was given five and a half years.

Kobzev’s own lawyer, Andrei Grivtsov, said the evidence against him amounted to an illegal violation of privacy.

“In principle they are not allowed to listen to meetings between lawyer and client in the penal colony – there is a direct legislative ban,” he told BBC Russian.

The three lawyers were tried near the penal colony in Pokrov, where Navalny was initially sent when he returned to Russia in January 2021, having survived a nerve agent attack that he blamed on Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin denied the charge and Navalny remained in Russian penal colonies until his death, north of the Arctic Circle and 1,900 km (1,200 mi) north-east of Moscow.

His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, blamed Putin for his death, which authorities described as “sudden death syndrome”.