Appealing unsuccessfully against his latestnine-year sentence, Navalny used his address to a Moscow court to deliver astinging attack on Putin and the war - a rare public act of dissent in acountry where it is a criminal offence to criticise the army and its"special military operation" in Ukraine.
Castigating Putin"s Russia as a state runby thieves and criminals, Navalny said the current leaders of Russia wouldultimately be crushed by the forces of history and burn in hell for creating abloodbath in Ukraine.
"This is a stupid war which your Putinstarted," Navalny, 45, told an appeal court in Moscow via video link froma corrective penal colony. "This war was built on lies."
"One madman has got his claws intoUkraine and I do not know what he wants to do with it - this crazy thief,"Navalny said of Putin.
The judge repeatedly interrupted Navalny.
Navalny, by far Russia"s most prominentopposition leader, was appealing against a nine-year jail sentence he washanded in March for fraud and contempt of court, on top of 2-1/2 years he isalready serving.
He denies all the charges against him andsays they were fabricated to thwart his political ambitions. His appeal wasrejected by the court.
A former lawyer who rose to prominence morethan a decade ago by lampooning Putin"s elite and voicing allegations ofcorruption on a vast scale, Navalny has long forecast Russia could face seismicpolitical turmoil through revolt.
He earned admiration from the disparateRussian opposition for voluntarily returning to Russia in 2021 from Germanywhere he underwent treatment for what Western laboratory tests showed was anattempt to poison him with a nerve agent in Siberia.
On his return he was jailed. Russia deniesNavalny"s claims that Russia"s secret police poisoned him with Novichok.
DEFEAT BECKONS
Navalny cast the prosecution"s"facts" as "lies" - and compared them to the lies he saidPutin, Russia"s paramount leader since the last day of 1999, had used to beginthe Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine.
"What do you want to achieve - do youwant short-term control, to fight with future generations, to fight for thefuture of Russia?" Navalny asked the court. "You will all sufferhistoric defeat."
"Your time will pass," Navalnysaid. "When you will all be burning in hell, your grandfathers will beadding wood to your fires."
The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissedNavalny"s claims about Putin, who it says has won numerous fair elections inRussia since 2000 and remains by far the country"s most popular politician. Ithas dismissed Navalny"s claim that Putin is corrupt as nonsense.
Putin says the "special militaryoperation" in Ukraine is necessary to demilitarise and"denazify" the country, and because the United States was usingUkraine to threaten Russia through NATO enlargement and Moscow had to defendagainst the persecution of Russian-speaking people.
Ukraine and its Western allies reject theseas baseless pretexts to invade a sovereign country.
