A Russian court on Friday handed Aleksei A. Navalny, the jailed Opposition leader, a new 19-year prison sentence on charges of supporting “extremism”, Russian state news media reported, a ruling that came amid intensified suppression of dissent in Russia.

Navalny, whose anti-corruption investigations criticising the Kremlin drew popular support and infuriated Russia’s top leadership, was already serving a nine-year sentence in a maximum-security penal colony in east of Moscow.

Acquittals are extremely rare in Russian courts, especially against opposition figures. Navalny and his supporters had predicted a harsh sentence, especially given that the Kremlin in recent months has banned criticism of its war in Ukraine, stepped up its jailing of opposition voices and shuttered liberal news media outlets.

In the case decided on Friday, Navalny, 47, was charged with promoting terrorism, funding extremism and rehabilitating Nazism. Prosecutors had called for him to serve an additional 20 years in prison on top of his conviction in March on fraud charges, a case that rights groups said was politically motivated.

Once upon a time, a two-decade sentence for what is essentially dissent would have been seen as unusually harsh. But the ruling was the latest in a string of extreme judgments.

In April, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a dissident with Russian and British citizenship and a contributor to The Washington Post, was sentenced to 25 years in prison for treason, spreading “fake” information and participating in an “undesirable organization”. Kara-Murza lost an appeal of the ruling this week.

Navalny and western rights groups have denounced the charges against him as an attempt to silence dissent against President Putin. “The sentence will be a long one,” Navalny said in a statement released by his organisation on the Telegram app on Thursday before the verdict.

New York Times News Service