Alexei Navalny today called on Russians from his prison cell to vote for “any candidate” other than the Kremlin’s candidates in local elections on September 10.

“We have to vote,” the 47-year-old opponent of the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin wrote in his message on the Internet. “Choose a candidate who is not a member of United Russia, there are many good ones.”

Russians to elect Moscow mayor and several local governors on September 10 in a vote which, according to the opposition, is tailor-made for Russian power.

Already imprisoned, Alexei Navalny, who was sentenced at the beginning of August to another 19 years in prison for “extremist activity”, calls on Russians to “maintain the habit of going to the polls, because sooner or later free elections will be held” in Russia.

He considers it necessary to support the people who want to run and to keep alive what is left of the voting supervision processes.

However, he warns that expects an increased level of fraud and believes that “the election of the mayor of Moscow will be rigged and will have no meaning.”

After all, the re-election of outgoing mayor Sergey Sobyanin is considered nothing more than a formality.

In the 18th month of the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Russia is under a state pogrom against the opposition and against the thousands of ordinary Russian citizens who dared to criticize the Russian invasion.

On Friday, a Russian court sentenced the co-chairman of the independent election watchdog Golos to two months in pretrial detention.

Alexei Navalny, who has already been convicted three times, faces the furious pursuit of Russian justice already before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but since then his situation has further deteriorated.

He was arrested and imprisoned on his return from Germany, where he was treated for poisoning during an assassination attempt, all evidence of which points to the Russian secret services and the Kremlin.

But his legal marathon does not stop here. He states that he is also being prosecuted for a case of “terrorism” in a judicial “investigation” the details of which have not been made known.