A Russian court sentenced Alexey Navalny to two and a half years in jail for violating probation following a 2014 embezzlement case.

Navalny just returned to Russia from Germany, where he spent the last six months, recovering from an assassination attempt by poisoning.

He accuses the Russian government of trying to kill him, a claim the Kremlin denies. Thousands of Russians have taken to the streets to demand his release.

Stuart Smith has the details, from Moscow.

To discuss:

• Pavel Felgenhauer is a defense analyst and a columnist for the Novaya Gazeta.
• Vladimir Golstein heads the Slavic Studies department at Brown University.
• Sean Guillory is a digital scholarship curator for the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian studies at the University of Pittsburgh.
• Harlan Ullman is the chairman of the Killowen Group.

For more:

Kremlin tries to downplay Navalny's jailing as thousands arrested https://t.co/kiY5FHXoWw

— The Guardian (@guardian) February 3, 2021

Germany, France, the UK, Australia, the US, as well as the EU and the UN have called for jailed Russian dissident Alexei Navalny to be freed. https://t.co/WUnppXaY9j

— DW News (@dwnews) February 3, 2021