Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny said Thursday he was slapped with new terrorism and extremism charges that he says could put him behind bars for up to 30 years.
“I received an official notification that a new criminal case has been initiated against me” for propagating extremism, calling for terrorism, financing extremist activity and rehabilitating Nazism, Navalny said.
“Lawyers calculated that, taking into account the [prison] terms for these laws, I could be here for up to 30 years.”
Navalny was sentenced to nine years in prison for fraud last March.
The 46-year-old was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he recovered from a poison attack that almost killed him, which he blames on the Kremlin.
Navalny has denounced President Vladimir Putin’s decision to send troops to Ukraine and earlier this month his organization said it would reopen its offices to fight against the Kremlin’s mobilization.
“I am a genius of the underworld,” he said on Twitter Thursday, in his usual joking style.
“You all thought I had been isolated in prison for two years, but it turns out I was actively committing crimes.”
Navalny, who rose to become Russia’s top opposition figure from mass anti-Putin protests in 2011, built a huge social media operation producing videos exposing corruption among government officials.
