Though he has long cultivated an image as a strong man, President Vladimir Putin of Russia actually seems weak and insecure, a judgment reinforced every time he manipulates the system to crush a potential political rival. Mr. Putin did so again on Thursday. A Russian court convicted Aleksei Navalny, a lawyer and charismatic opposition leader who was running for mayor of Moscow, of stealing $500,000 from a state-controlled timber company and sentenced him to five years in prison. The charges and heavy punishment were a transparent retaliation for Mr. Navalny's campaign against public corruption and Mr. Putin's United Russia political machine as a party of "swindlers and thieves."
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The process was plainly rigged. The charge against Mr. Navalny had already been investigated and dismissed. The judge based many of his findings on another accused man who turned prosecution witness and gave contradictory testimony. Defense lawyers were not allowed to cross-examine him or call 13 witnesses.
Mikhail Gorbachev, the final president of the Soviet Union, described the case as "proof that we do not have independent courts." But corruption, intolerance and the absence of the rule of law have come to define Mr. Putin's Russia. In the last year or so, women from the punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed for an anti-Putin protest, and other activists have been jailed. The government went so far as to try and convict a dead man for tax evasion — Sergei Magnitsky, a whistle-blowing lawyer who died four years ago in a Moscow jail cell. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, a once-powerful businessman who opposed Mr. Putin's first election, recently marked his 10th year in prison.
As a convicted criminal, Mr. Navalny may be barred from the mayor's race. Nevertheless, he urged his supporters to maintain the struggle. "If you are reading this, you are the resistance," he wrote. It has long been clear that Mr. Putin, who honed his bullying instincts as a K.G.B. officer, cannot tolerate challenge or even political debate. But he won't be in power forever. If they listen to Mr. Navalny, Russians who want a more democratic and equitable country could someday still emerge victorious.
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