Defiant anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny goes on trial in Russia
It is a trial that his supporters hope will one day be seen as a pivotal moment in Russian history, but many people here in Kirov do not even know that it is taking place. In the dock is Alexei Navalny, the charismatic anti-corruption blogger who has become the most high-profile critic of President Vladimir Putin. Mr Navalny is accused of embezzling £330,000 while acting as an adviser to a local timber company in 2009. If found guilty, he could be jailed for up to ten years.
In a brief hearing this morning, Judge Sergei Blinov adjourned the case for a week to give Mr Navalny and his lawyers more time to get acquainted with the vast amount of case materials. Mr Blinov has never issued a not-guilty verdict in his career. “I’m not going to say the usual banal phrases: that I’m not guilty, that this whole case is fabricated,” said Mr Navalny inside the courtroom. “I think anyone, even without a legal education, can read the case for themselves and see that it is nonsense.”
Mr Navalny, who has said he wants to become president of Russia, arrived in Kirov 90 minutes before the hearing on an overnight train from Moscow, accompanied by several dozen supporters, activists and journalists. He was greeted by a small but boisterous crowd at Kirov train station, leading some to make comparisons with Vladimir Lenin, the Bolshevik leader who famously arrived in revolutionary St Petersburg by train in 1917.
There is a long way to go, however, before Mr Navalny’s dreams of overthrowing the current Kremlin regime can be considered even vaguely plausible. He is a celebrity with a rock-star following among the young, internet-savvy generation in Moscow and other big cities, but out in the provinces he is an unknown. Many people in Kirov said they have never so much as heard of Mr Navalny, while others were vaguely aware of his existence but thought he might be an oligarch, or a corrupt local official. “I know that there is a case going on, but I prefer not to follow it, politics is a dirty business,” said Eduard, a local interior designer. “We have a saying – the less you know, the better you sleep.”
Kirov, a dilapidated provincial city of muddy potholed roads and crumbling buildings, was famous as a Tsarist-era place of exile for dissidents and revolutionaries. The satirical author Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, known for his acerbic musings about the Tsarist regime, spent several years banished to the city in the 1850s, during which time he worked for the local governor in the building that now functions as the courthouse where Mr Navalny is standing trial. read more
