The spokeswoman for Alexei Navalny, long the main opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin and now in prison, said on Friday that three of Navalny’s lawyers had been arrested by Russian authorities. Several of Navalny’s political allies have accused the Russian government of wanting to deprive him in this way of one of his very few channels of communication with the outside world.
The spokesperson says that lawyers Vadim Kobzev, Igor Sergunin and Aleksei Liptser were placed under investigation on suspicion of belonging to an extremist group and that they were arrested after a search of their homes. The Russian investigative authorities have not yet confirmed the news, however It was given including from government-controlled Russian state media. The first hearing in the trial of the three lawyers was to be held on Friday behind closed doors “to protect the secrecy of the investigation”.
One of the three lawyers, Kobzev, was also due to appear in a courtroom with Navalny on Friday, in the latest of a series of lawsuits the politician has filed against the IK-6 penal colony, where he is currently detained. Navalny has been in prison since 2021 and is serving a total of 30-year sentences for charges that the vast majority of commentators and freedom of expression experts consider specious and politically motivated. He is in a “special regime colony,” which is a maximum security facility reserved for prisoners labeled as dangerous and given limited communication rights.