Alexey Navalny uses closing remarks of embezzlement case against him to condemn Vladimir Putin's government
Russia's top opposition leader, Alexey Navalny, has vowed to destroy the "feudal system of power" lorded over by Vladimir Putin during powerful closing remarks to a provincial court that could send him to prison for six years.
Blasting Putin's government for "occupying" power, pilfering the country of billions of dollars and leading Russia down a path of vodka-fuelled degradation, Navalny urged his followers not to be afraid as he awaits a likely jail sentence.
"My colleagues and I will do everything to destroy this feudal system that exists in Russia – this system of power where 83% of the national wealth belongs to 0.5% of the country," he said.
"Not one of us has the right to neutrality," Navalny told the court (video) in Kirov, 500 miles east of Moscow, where he is standing trial on charges of embezzlement that are widely seen as a means of silencing Putin's most virulent critic.
"Each time one of us thinks: 'I'll just stand aside and things will happen without me and I'll wait', then he is helping this disgusting feudal system that sits like a spider in that Kremlin," Navalny said.
Navalny has grown from being a politically active anti-corruption activist into the most prominent opposition leader to organise mass anti-Putin protests that shook Moscow early last year. He has continued to uncover dozens of cases of official wrongdoing, from state-run companies to prominent MPs. Last month, he announced he would run for mayor of Moscow in snap elections called for September.
In a country where independent political activism is crushed and expressing anti-Putin sentiment is increasingly dangerous, many had long expected Navalny's arrest. As Putin unleashed a crackdown against civil society unseen since the Soviet era upon his return to the Kremlin last year, prosecutors brought case after criminal case against Navalny.
In Kirov, state prosecutors allege that Navalny, 37, embezzled 16m roubles (£330,000) worth of timber from a state firm when he was advising the region's liberal governor in 2009.
On Friday, prosecutors asked the judge to hand him a six0year jail sentence and a 1m rouble fine – below the maximum 10-year sentence he could have faced, but enough to keep him in jail for Russia's next presidential election in 2018.
"If someone thinks that in hearing this threat of six years I will run away, abroad, or hide somewhere, you are very, very mistaken," Navalny said. "I'm not running anywhere – I have no other choice. I don't want to do anything else. I want to help the people of my country.
"It's been 15 years since huge oil and gas money arrived and what has it brought to the country? Did we get better access to medicine, education, housing conditions? What did we get – those of us on this or that side of the defendants' bench? The only thing that became more accessible to our people now than in Soviet times is vodka.
"We will destroy this feudal system that robs all of you," he said.
Addressing the judge, who kept his eyes cast downward during a speech that recalled the traditions of Soviet dissidents, Navalny said: "Even though you put me on the defendants' bench, my colleagues and I will protect you from all this."
The judge is due to hand down his verdict on 18 July. Less than 1% of Russian court cases end in acquittals.