A Russian court said the lawyers for Aleksei Navalny, the country’s top opposition figure before his death in a penal colony last year, were guilty of involvement in an extremist group.

Lawyers who represented the late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny are sentenced in a Kremlin crackdown on dissent at levels unseen since Soviet times.

Three lawyers for Alexey Navalny, the Kremlin critic who died last year in an Arctic prison, have been found guilty by a Russian court of belonging to an extremist group and jailed for several years.

Russia on Friday sentenced three lawyers who had defended Alexei Navalny to several years in prison for bringing messages from the late opposition leader from prison to the outside world.The case, which comes amid a massive crackdown on dissent during the Ukraine offensive,

Arrested in 2023, the lawyers were charged with extremism for relaying messages from Alexei Navalny while he was in prison before his death.

Three lawyers who defended the Russian opposition leader before his death were sentenced to up to five years as the biggest crackdown on dissent since the Soviet era deepened.