Top Putin critic Navalny freed by Russian court

Russian protest leader Alexei Navalny escaped being sent to a penal colony on controversial charges he claims were ordered by the Kremlin after a court converted his five-year term into a suspended sentence.

President Vladimir Putin’s most vehement critic walked free from court after the appeal verdict, although the embezzlement conviction that disqualifies him from politics remains.

The three judges hearing the appeal at the regional court in the northern Kirov region said they would “change the sentence for Alexei Navalny into a suspended term”.

The decision came after Navalny made a surprisingly robust showing in the Moscow mayor election in September, coming second behind the Putin loyalist mayor Sergei Sobyanin.

Analysts said it could have been prompted by fears of his capacity to mobilise street protests that could have shaken the Kremlin if he had been sent to jail.

Several thousand Navalny supporters took to the streets of Moscow after his five-year sentence was announced in July.

“It is all absolutely obvious that all the decisions, first on the real sentence and the change now to suspended, are taken definitely not here but personally by Vladimir Putin,” Navalny said after the ruling.

“I have not the faintest idea what is going on in his head, why he changes his decision,” he added, to applause from his supporters.

Now his conviction has been confirmed, Navalny is barred from standing for office in the foreseeable future. But he defiantly vowed to carry on the battle against Putin and his allies.

“It is absolutely clear they will not manage to push out me and my colleagues from this political fight. We will continue.”

Navalny, who also faces several other criminal probes, said he would appeal the conviction. Writing later on his blog, he said it would be strange to call the decision a victory. “I am not going to be able to run for office,” he said.

Navalny’s co-accused Pyotr Ofitserov, who was previously sentenced to four years in a colony, also received a suspended term.

The hearing was un-characteristically swift, with Navalny saying he saw no sense in participating in debates. The judge said the reasoning for the decision would be presented later.

Navalny won 27% in Moscow mayoral polls with his populist campaign playing on anti-migrant moods and weariness with widespread corruption.

He charged that the Moscow authorities had skewed the vote in favour of Sobyanin to avoid a humiliating second round run-off.

In July, Kirov’s Lenin district court found Navalny and Ofitserov guilty of embezzlement over a 2009 timber deal.