Moscow: A Russian judge convicted Aleksei A. Navalny, an opposition politician and one of the Kremlin's most charismatic critics, of fraud charges on Wednesday, a move that bars him from running for the presidency next year.
President Vladimir Putin - in power since 2000, having served two terms as president, then one as prime minister before returning to the presidency - is expected to seek a fourth term next year. Mr Navalny was widely regarded as the only viable rival.
Mr Navalny was given a five-year suspended prison sentence and fined 500,000 rubles, or about $11, 000. He and his supporters dismissed the accusation - that he embezzled about $650,000 worth of timber from a state-owned company - as baseless and politically motivated.
The lengthy legal ruling was similar to a judgment issued against Mr Navalny in 2013, which resulted in large-scale protests and resulted in a five-year suspended prison sentence. That verdict was overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, and Russia's supreme court ordered a new trial.
In 2013, after the earlier conviction, Mr Navalny was allowed to run for the mayor of Moscow, garnering 27.2 per cent of the vote, just short of the threshold to send him into a runoff against the Kremlin-sponsored candidate. The Kremlin probably wants to avoid a repeat of that situation in the race for the presidency.
The mayoral campaign catapulted Mr Navalny to prominence in a country where dissidents are frequently silenced, exiled or even killed.
The new verdict was, word for word, almost identical to the one in 2013.
He also tweeted that a lawmaker had asked prosecutors to check out Mr Navalny's new campaign headquarters in St. Petersburg. Mr Navalny said he would try to keep the office open but that his campaign would continue even without one.
At the final court hearing Friday, Mr Navalny said that regardless of the verdict, he was determined to proceed with his presidential bid.
"My campaign will continue," Mr Navalny told the court. "I believe I have moral and legal rights to take part in this election."
Mr Navalny has said he would appeal the new ruling to both the Russian supreme court and the European Court of Human Rights.
The New York Times