New Russian Case Registered Against Navalny

Aleksei Navalny appears via video link during a court hearing in Moscow last month.

Jailed Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny will head to trial on May 31 on new charges of "extremism."

Navalny's social network accounts said on May 25 that the proceedings at the Moscow City Court involved charges of the creation of an "extremist" group, calls for "extremism," the creation of a nonprofit organization that violates citizens' rights, the financing of "extremism;" the involvement of a minor in criminal activities, and the rehabilitation of Nazism.

According to Navalny's Telegram channel , the outspoken Kremlin critic has to get acquainted with 3,828 pages of the new lawsuit filed against him before the trial, which was officially registered with the court earlier this week.

Navalny, who is currently in punitive solitary confinement, is not allowed to have the case documents in his cell.

He said in April that a new probe on terrorism charges had been launched against him, calling them "absurd."

Navalny also said another case charging him with propagating terrorism and Nazism was launched in October over his self-exiled associates' statements on the Popular Politics YouTube channel. The comments criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and his government and condemned Moscow’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB) claimed in April that Navalny’s associates, along with Ukraine's secret services, were involved in the assassination of pro-Kremlin journalist and propagandist Vladlen Tatarsky in Russia's second-largest city, St. Petersburg.

Navalny has been in prison since February 2021, after he was arrested a month earlier upon his return to Russia from Germany -- where he had been undergoing treatment for a near-fatal poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent that he says was ordered by Putin.

The Kremlin has denied any role in Navalny's poisoning, even though experts say only state actors have access to the military-grade nerve agent.

Many of Navalny's close associates fled the country amid pressure from Russian authorities.