Navalny's conviction signals Kremlin's determination to jail any opponent - nationalist activist
MOSCOW. July 18 (Interfax) - Dmitry Dyomushkin, the leader of the nationalist group Russians, sees the five-year prison term handed down on Thursday on prominent opposition leader Alexei Navalny as the authorities' determination to imprison any opponents but insists that Navalny should not withdraw from mayoral elections in Moscow.
"I am extremely surprised that Navalny has been given real jail time. But I am surprised even more by his decision to withdraw from the mayoral elections. This shouldn't have been done in any case," Dyomushkin told Interfax on Thursday.
"I didn't expect such a tough sentence. The authorities have shown everybody that they won't joke with anyone, and there'll be no suspended sentences," Dyomushkin said. "That is, people will be put in jail for a long time. Everyone who stands up and raises the flag today should be ready to be visited and go to jail tomorrow," he said.
Navalny's loss and acting Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin's win in the mayoral elections were obvious, but Navalny's participation in them as a candidate was important in order to show that an alternative may be popular, he said.
"It is one thing to jail a person who simply shouts and screams, and quite another to jail a person for whom a million Muscovites have voted," Dyomushkin said.
"This conviction will undoubtedly increase his popularity. Even my grandma would vote for him now. The authorities themselves have added to his popularity, and he has become the second Khodorkovsky," he said.
The Leninsky District Court in Kirov found Navalny and his co-defendant Pyotr Ofitserov guilty of embezzling property belonging to the state-run timber company Kirovles and sentenced them to five and four years respectively earlier on Thursday. Both were taken into custody in the courtroom. After the sentence was handed down, Navalny's campaign staff announced that he would withdraw from the Moscow mayoral elections.
