Sputnik
The trial of opposition activist Alexei Navalny on charges of defaming an elderly citizen of the Great Patriotic War resumed in Moscow on Friday.
The session was attended by diplomats from Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, as well as the European Union representative.
For his part, the 95-year-old veteran, Ignat Artemenko, declared in a statement read by the plaintiff that he could not attend today’s session with advice from doctors, blaming Navalny for repeatedly abusing him and his family members.
This came after the deterioration of Artemenko’s health while attending the first session of the trial virtually.
The session witnessed a verbal altercation between Navalny and Igor Kolesnikov, after the accused held the grandson of the old warrior responsible for forging his grandfather’s signature and “using it as a doll.”
Artemenko was among the people who appeared in a tape produced by RT last year, expressing their support for the constitutional amendments proposed by President Vladimir Putin and adopted in July.
On Twitter, Navalny strongly criticized those who appeared in that video, describing them as “a disgrace to the state”, “traitors” and “without a conscience.”
And the Russian judiciary had previously decided to imprison Navalny, who was arrested in early January upon his return to his homeland from Germany, for a period of 2.8 years on charges of violating the terms of suspending the execution of the prison sentence issued against him previously in the case of embezzlement.
Source: Russian media
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