Moscow City Court upholds real jail term for Navalny's brother Oleg

MOSCOW. March 31 (Interfax) - The Moscow City Court has upheld as lawful the replacement of a suspended sentence of Oleg Navalny, brother of Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny, in the so-called sanitary case with real jail time.

"The ruling has been upheld," the court's press service told Interfax.

Moscow's Lyublinsky District Court granted the Federal Penitentiary Service's motion for replacing the suspended sentence of Oleg Navalny with real time in a high-security penitentiary in February.

Oleg Navalny did not attend the hearing. The Federal Penitentiary Service said he left Russia for Cyprus in September 2021 and was put on the wanted list for that reason.

Back on August 6, 2021, Moscow's Preobrazhensky District Court gave a yearlong suspended sentence with a yearlong probation to Oleg Navalny, having found him guilty of instigation to violate sanitary and epidemiological rules.

The court said that, during the probation period, Oleg Navalny could not change his permanent or temporary place of residence without notifying his probation officer and was supposed to get registered with the probation department.

The Russian Interior Ministry put Oleg Navalny on the wanted list on January 26. The lawyer said, citing the ministry's report, that Oleg Navalny "failed to get registered and was put on the wanted list after probation officers visited his home and did not find him there."

The criminal case was based on an unsanctioned protest in Moscow on January 23, 2021.