Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was convicted of fraud and contempt of court and sentenced to nine years in a maximum-security prison on Tuesday.
A judge also ruled that Navalny would have to pay a fine of 1.2 million rubles (about $11,500).
Navalny is currently serving another prison sentence of 2 1/2 years in a prison colony east of Moscow. His associates have said the new trial was intended to keep Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's longtime foe, behind bars for as long as possible. Navalny has rejected the charges as bogus.
Russian prosecutors were seeking to move Navalny to a maximum-security penal colony for 13 years.
"Navalny committed fraud – the theft of property by an organized group," Judge Margarita Kotova said, according to an Agence France-Presse (AFP) reporter present at the trial held in the penal colony.
The Kremlin critic is already serving a 2 1/2 year sentence at the prison camp east of the capital for parole violations related to charges he says were trumped up to thwart his political ambitions.
His national opposition movement has been labeled "extremist" and shut down, but he has continued to issue messages on social media from prison through his legal team and aides, recently urging Russians to oppose the war in Ukraine.
Navalny's spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, said last week that prosecutors had requested a transfer to a maximum-security jail because they said he had committed crimes in the prison camp.
"Probably it will be further from Moscow and lawyers will have difficulty entering this colony and we will not have access to Alexei," she said on Monday. "It’s not a question of his freedom, it’s a question of his life ... They are the same people that tried to kill him already ... This is what we are afraid of," she said.
Navalny was jailed last year when he returned to Russia after receiving medical treatment in Germany following a poison attack with a Soviet-era nerve toxin during a visit to Siberia in 2020. Navalny blamed Putin for the attack, a charge the Kremlin denies.
Yarmysh said Navalny expected the Lefortovo court in Moscow to hand down the full 13-year sentence that the prosecution had requested – but that Navalny's work would continue.
"I'm completely sure that Alexei won't be in prison for (an extra) 13 years. Putin himself won't last that long," she asserted. "And we now know how to communicate with Alexei and how he can supervise our activity from prison," she added.
After the last hearing on March 15, Navalny struck a typically defiant tone, saying on Instagram: "If the prison term is the price of my human right to say things that need to be said ... then they can ask for 113 years. I will not renounce my words or deeds."
Many of Navalny's most prominent allies have left Russia rather than face restrictions or jail at home.
Yarmysh herself is on a wanted list and left Russia last year after a court restricted her freedom of movement for 18 months, alleging breaches of COVID-19 safety rules.
