(Bloomberg) -- Germany called for the immediate release of Alexey Navalny after the jailed Russian opposition leader was sentenced to nine years in a high-security prison on Tuesday.
There is “nothing to justify” the judgment, German government spokesman Steffen Hebestreit said in a Twitter post. “The external aggression and internal repression have reached a new dimension in Russia,” Hebestreit wrote.
Tuesday's ruling will keep Russian President Vladimir Putin's top critic, currently serving a two-and-a-half year sentence, sidelined for longer.
The latest sentencing is “a blatant act of despotism,” Germany's foreign office later said in a statement. “It adds to the systematic instrumentalization of the Russian justice system against dissidents and the political opposition.”
Read More: Putin, Poison and the Importance of Alexey Navalny: QuickTake
Navalny's poisoning in 2020 sparked a deterioration of relations between Germany and Russia after former Chancellor Angela Merkel sided with the anti-corruption investigator, whose exposes have targeted Putin's inner circle. Navalny accused Putin of ordering the attack on him with the weapons-grade nerve agent Novichok. The Kremlin said at the time that it found no proof Navalny was poisoned.
Read More: Kremlin's ‘Berlin Patient' Leaves Merkel Fed Up With Putin
Navalny was initially hospitalized in the Siberian city of Omsk, where his flight to Moscow was forced to make an emergency landing after he fell violently ill on board. He was later flown to Germany and for several weeks was in an induced coma in the Charite hospital in Berlin, where he was visited by Merkel. He was arrested upon his return to Russia after recovering from the attack.
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