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Navalny’s sentence unlikely to affect political situation in Russia, Kremlin says

The spokesman also said he is unaware of any reaction of President Putin to this sentence

MOSCOW, February 3. /TASS/. The sentence on Alexey Navalny’s case is unlikely to significantly affect the political situation in Russia, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Wednesday.

"The political situation in the country is rather multifaceted. The country prepares for parliamentary elections in September, a lot of different processes take place, new political parties form. This is a very multifaceted process, so, it is unlikely that there will be any significant effect," Peskov said.

He also said he is unaware of any reaction of President Vladimir Putin to this sentence.

"I am not aware about any reaction from the president. You know that we traditional refrain from commenting on court verdicts and rulings. We will refrain from doing so now, as well," Peskov said, adding that he will not provide any personal assessment of the ruling, too.

"[I will not comment] in any way," Peskov said. "This is a court ruling that we simply have no right to comment."

On February 2, the Simonovsky court of Moscow replaced Navalny’s suspended sentence over the Yves Rocher case with an actual prison term of 3.5 years. According to the preliminary data, the sentence will include the time the blogger spent under house arrest, shortening his imprisonment to about 2.5 years.