Russian opposition leader’s 9-year sentence appeal rejected

MOSCOW (AP) — A Russian court has rejected opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s appeal of a nine-year prison sentence for fraud. The rejection Tuesday means Navalny will be sent to a high-security prison according to the independent news site Mediazona. Navalny is the Kremlin’s most persistent critic who had built a nationwide network of supporters. He was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany where he had been recuperating from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Authorities said the six months of recovery abroad violated terms of a 3½-year suspended sentence in a fraud case. In March he was sentenced to nine years in a separate case.