Russian public prosecutors asked today to be sentenced to 20 years imprisonment in a penal colony to jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny on charges of extremist activity, according to the court where his case is being heard, state news agency TASS reported.

The TASS agency, citing Navalny’s lawyer, reported thatThe verdict will be announced on August 4.

Navalny’s trial began last month behind closed doors at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 kilometers east of Moscow, where he is already serving sentences totaling 11-1/2 years for fraud and other charges he says were concocted to silence him.

As the Mediazona website explains, in total, not including today’s meeting, 16 meetings have been held. From the start of the trial, journalists were barred from entering the courtroom, while public access to the trial was subsequently barred.

Navalny is charged under six articles of the Russian Criminal Code: for calling for extremism, for creating an NGO that violates the rights of citizens, for financing extremist activity, for establishing an extremist organization, for attracting minors for the purpose of carrying out dangerous acts, and for restoring Nazism.

Based on these articles, there is the possibility that he will be sentenced to 30 years in prison.

Along with Navalni, the former technical director of the Navalnii LIVE channel is on trial in the same case on You Tube, Daniel Halodnii, who has already been in custody for over a year.

Defense witnesses in the Navalny case were the convicted Russian politicians Ilya Yashin, Vladimir Kara-Murza and Lilia Chanisheva, as well as the former mayor of the city of Yekaterinburg Yevgeny Roizman and the Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist and director of the Novaya Gazeta newspaper Dmitry Muratov.

Today, July 20, Alexei Navalny, addressing the court, criticized the Russian authorities for the impoverishment of the Russian people that they have caused and condemned the war in Ukraine again. “…My Russia, took several large leaps, pushing everyone around her, but then she slipped and crashed with a thud, destroying everything around her. And now it stagnates in a puddle of either mud or blood, with broken bones, with an impoverished, robbed people, while around it lie tens of thousands dead in the most senseless and senseless war of the 21st century,” Navalny said.

The text of his speech in court was published on the Russian politician’s social media.