Jailed Putin critic Navalny sentenced to 9 years in gulag hell just a day after revealing ‘Russian tyrant’s £532m yacht’

POISONED Putin critic Alexei Navalny was handed nine years in a penal colony today after being found guilty of "cooked up" fraud charges.

The brave Kremlin nemesis - who is already behind bars and banned from standing in elections - was convicted of large-scale embezzlement and contempt after a trial widely seen as a sham.

Prosecutors had wanted him caged for 13 years in a gulag-style penal colony to finally silence his courageous campaign against tyrant Putin.

Navalny, 45, defiantly quoted TV crime drama The Wire after the sentence was handed down by a regime-friendly judge.

He said on Twitter: "Nine years. Well, as the characters of my favorite TV series The Wire used to say: 'You only do two days. That's the day you go in and the day you come out.

"I even had a T-shirt with this slogan, but the prison authorities confiscated it."

He also repeated his call for Russians to take action saying: "Don't be idle. This toad sitting on an oil pipe will not overthrow itself."

Immediately after the sentencing, Navalny's lawyers Olga Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev had been detained near the prison and taken away in a police van.

Navalny has been locked up since January 2021 when he returned to Russia from Germany where he had been recovering from an attempt to kill him with novichok nerve agent.

He was handed a two-and-a-half year jail sentence for breaking bail conditions while he was critically ill in hospital.

Navalny went on trial again last month inside the maximum-security prison east of Moscow where he is detained.

He was accused of stealing £3.5million of donations to his political organisations.

Supporters say the charges were "fabricated" in an attempt to keep Putin's most potent critic locked up for as long as possible.

Today judge Margarita Kotova found Navalny guilty of fraud, saying he had carried out "the theft of property by an organised group".

She also found him guilty of contempt of court after he allegedly insulted a judge in a previous case.

Navalny, looking gaunt in prison garb, folded his arms and grinned as the ruling was delivered.

His spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh said he faced being transferred to a high-security colony with much stricter conditions than in his current tough jail.

She claimed it was not just his freedom that was at stake but also his life, because his accusers had already tried to kill him in Siberia.

Ms Yarmysh added the entire case had been bogus, and that while the world's attention was on Ukraine, "another monstrous crime was being committed inside Russia".

Downing Street today said the new sentence was the continuation of “trumped up charges that Putin uses against those that seek to hold him to account”.

The PM’s official spokesman said: “Our thoughts are with Alexei Navalny and his family as he continues to show incredible bravery in standing up to Putin's regime.”

Amnesty International dismissed the trial as a sham, and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned it as incompatible with the rule of law.

Crackdown

Navalny himself made several elaborate speeches during the trial, decrying the charges against him as politically motivated.

Despite being in jail, he has called on supporters to take to the streets in protest at Putin's slaughter of civilians in Ukraine.

His supporters also embarrassed Putin by revealing he owned a £1bn Black Sea palace complete with a stripper pole.

And yesterday they posted online "proof" that Putin is the real owner of a £530million yacht crewed by Russian secret service agents.

They claim Putin has made himself and his cronies immensely rich by trousering state resources.

Following Navalny's imprisonment last January, authorities unleashed a sweeping crackdown on his associates and supporters.

His closest allies have left Russia after facing trumped-up criminal charges.

And his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of nearly 40 regional offices were outlawed as "extremist".

The Kremlin denies any involvement in poisoning opposition leader Navalny, who has become Putin's fiercest domestic critic.

Last year it emerged the Russian doctor who saved his life was dead - allegedly by poisoning - and the boss of the hospital vanished in mysterious circumstances.