MOSCOW – Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny faced a court hearing Tuesday that could end with him being sent to prison for years.
The 44-year-old Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator who is the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, was arrested Jan.
17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin.
The accusation has been rejected by the Russian authorities. Russia’s penitentiary service alleged that Navalny had violated the probation of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money-laundering conviction that he has rejected as politically motivated.