Navalny Ally Chanysheva Jailed 9.5 Years After Retrial for ‘Extremism’

A court in Russia’s republic of Bashkortostan on Tuesday sentenced a former regional coordinator of the late opposition activist Alexei Navalny to nine-and-a-half years in prison on “extremism” charges following a retrial.

Lilia Chanysheva, 42, was the first of Navalny’s associates to be arrested on “extremism” charges in November 2021. Most of his other key aides have fled Russia and now live in exile. 

She headed Navalny’s political office in Bashkortostan’s capital of Ufa until it was forced to dissolve in 2021, when the authorities blacklisted Navalny’s activist network as “extremist.” 

An Ufa court last June handed Chanysheva a seven-and-a-half-year prison sentence for creating an extremist organization, accusations that she and her allies dismiss as politically motivated.

An appellate court in March sent the case to the republic of Bashkortostan’s Supreme Court after prosecutors appealed the sentence and requested to jail Chanysheva for 10 years.

Bashkortostan’s Supreme Court on Tuesday handed Chanysheva a nine-and-a-half-year prison term, according to an announcement posted on her Telegram channel.

“Lilia shouldn’t spend a day in detention,” the Team Navalny Telegram channel said Monday, the day when the trial was originally scheduled to be held.  “But the authorities decided to take such heinous revenge on her in retaliation for her fight against lying, looting of the country and poverty.”