Russia jails four journalists for alleged extremist ties to late Alexei Navalny

Telegraph

15-04-2025

Four Russian journalists accused of working with the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny have each been sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison.
Antonina Favorskaya, Konstantin Gabov, Sergey Karelin and Artyom Kriger were found guilty of involvement with a group that was labelled as extremist.
All four, who worked with Mr Navalny's Foundation for Fighting Corruption, maintained their innocence and said they had been targeted for their work as journalists.
Mr Navalny was Russia's most prominent opposition politician and relentlessly campaigned against official corruption in the Kremlin. He died last year in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence, which he had rejected as politically driven.
Russian authorities have targeted opposition figures, independent journalists, rights activists and ordinary Russian citizens who are critical of the Kremlin, particularly since the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
It came as Russia's foreign spy service chief, Sergei Naryshkin, said the country's security services, as well as its key ally Belarus, were ready to act proactively in response to 'escalation' by Europe over the war in Ukraine.
'We feel and see that European countries, especially France, Britain and Germany, are increasing the level of escalation around the Ukrainian conflict, so we need to act preemptively. We are ready for this,' he said during talks with Alexander Lukashenko, the Belarusian dictator, in Minsk.
Mr Naryshkin gave no details of how Russia and Belarus would respond to European 'escalation'. Western security officials suspect agents hired by both countries were behind a number of attacks across the continent in recent years, including targeting under sea cables and cargo planes.
Meanwhile, Ukraine on Tuesday claimed to have struck a Russian military base belonging to one of the Russian rocket brigades it says conducted a deadly strike on the city of Sumy on Palm Sunday.
'(A base) of the 448th missile brigade of the Russian occupiers was hit, a secondary detonation of ammunition was recorded.
'The results of the strike are being clarified,' the military said in a statement on Telegram.
Footage taken on the side of a road appears to show a huge fire roaring at the base, which is based in Kursk, late last night.
Residents in the northern Ukrainian region were still reeling from the deadly ballistic missile strike, which killed 34 people and injured over 100 more.
'Everyone I spoke to feels despair, sadness, rage and hatred for the enemy,'
Liza Sherstyuk, a local aid worker, told the Telegraph.
The strike was widely condemned by European leaders but the G7 was blocked from releasing a joint statement criticising Russia by the Trump administration.
A source told Bloomberg that the US would refrain from criticising Russia over the attack as it wanted to keep peace negotiations with the Kremlin on track.
But the Kremlin played down the prospect of a peace deal being reached any time soon, saying there was 'no clear outline' of an agreement.
'There are no clear outlines of any deal yet. But there is a political will to move toward a deal,' Vladimir Putin's spokesman said.
JD Vance, the vice president, also played down a suggestion by Volodymyr Zelensky that the US had sided with Russia in the conflict.
'I think it's sort of absurd for Zelensky to tell the [US] government, which is currently keeping his entire government and war effort together, that we are somehow on the side of the Russians,' Mr Vance said in a new interview.
'You have to try to understand where both the Russians and the Ukrainians see their strategic objectives. That doesn't mean you morally support the Russian cause,' he told the UnHerd website.
Discussing his public row with Donald Trump and Mr Vance in February, Mr Zelensky earlier told CBS News: 'It seems to me that the [US] vice-president is somehow justifying Putin's actions.'
The Ukrainian president said he tried to explain to Mr Vance that 'there is an aggressor and a victim. The Russians are the aggressor, and we are the victim'.