LONDON: Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Tuesday he has been charged in a new criminal case and faces up to 15 more years on top of his existing sentence if found guilty.
In posts on social media, Navalny said he had been charged with creating an extremist organization and inciting hate toward the authorities. The charge comes on top of a nine-year sentence he received in March for fraud and contempt of court, before which he was already serving a 2-1/2 year sentence.
“Not even eight days have passed since my nine-year high-security sentence came into force, and today the investigator showed up again and formally charged me with a new case,” Navalny said on Twitter.
“It turns out that I created an extremist group in order to incite hatred toward officials and oligarchs. And when they put me in jail, I dared to be disgruntled about it and called for rallies. For that, they’re supposed to add up to 15 more years to my sentence,” he said.
There was no immediate confirmation of the new charges.
Human rights organizations and Western politicians have condemned the various criminal cases launched against Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile opponent, in recent years.
In 2020, Navalny was poisoned with a nerve agent during a campaigning trip in Siberia, according to analysis conducted by multiple European medical institutions. After months of medical treatment in Germany, he was arrested for parole violations when he returned to Russia at the start of 2021.
Following the invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin has accelerated its decades-long campaign to quash and silence Russia’s domestic opposition. Navalny has spoken out against the war, attacking Putin during a court appearance and calling the invasion “stupid” and “built on lies.”
Russia’s Navalny says he faces new criminal case, up to 15 more years in jail
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Russia’s Navalny says he faces new criminal case, up to 15 more years in jail
- Human rights organizations and Western politicians have condemned the various criminal cases launched against Navalny, who is President Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile opponent, in recent years
India plans AI ‘data city’ on staggering scale
- ‘The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius’
NEW DELHI: As India races to narrow the artificial intelligence gap with the United States and China, it is planning a vast new “data city” to power digital growth on a staggering scale, the man spearheading the project says.
“The AI revolution is here, no second thoughts about it,” said Nara Lokesh, information technology minister for Andhra Pradesh state, which is positioning the city of Visakhapatnam as a cornerstone of India’s AI push.
“And as a nation ... we have taken a stand that we’ve got to embrace it,” he said ahead of an international AI summit next week in New Delhi.
Lokesh boasts the state has secured investment agreements of $175 billion involving 760 projects, including a $15 billion investment by Google for its largest AI infrastructure hub outside the United States.
And a joint venture between India’s Reliance Industries, Canada’s Brookfield and US firm Digital Realty is investing $11 billion to develop an AI data center in the same city.
Visakhapatnam — home to around two million people and popularly known as “Vizag” — is better known for its cricket ground that hosts international matches than cutting-edge technology.
But the southeastern port city is now being pitched as a landing point for submarine internet cables linking India to Singapore.
“The data city is going to come in one ecosystem ... with a 100 kilometer radius,” Lokesh said. For comparison, Taiwan is roughly 100 kilometers wide.
Lokesh said the plan goes far beyond data connectivity, adding that his state had “received close to 25 percent of all foreign direct investments” to India in 2025.
“It’s not just about the data centers,” he explained while outlining a sweeping vision of change, with Andhra Pradesh offering land at one US cent per acre for major investors.
