(Reuters) – Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny is expecting to hear a verdict Tuesday in Russia’s most recent criminal case against the Kremlin. In it, prosecutors are seeking to send him to a maximum security penal colony for thirteen years to face fraud-related charges.

Navalny has already been sentenced to a two and a half year term in a Moscow prison for parole violations. These are charges he claims were made up to make him a political enemy of President Vladimir Putin.

Although his national opposition group has been labeled “extremist” by the authorities and closed down, he continues to post messages via social media, while in prison, through his legal team, aides and has recently called on Russians not to support the war in Ukraine.

Kira Yarmysh (the spokeswoman for Navalny) stated last week that the prosecutors requested a transfer into a maximum security jail after claiming that Navalny had been convicted in the prison camp.

On Monday, she stated that it would be far from Moscow. Lawyers will find it difficult to access the colony. Alexei will also not be accessible.

“It’s not a question of his freedom, it’s a question of his life … He was already killed by the same people they tried to murder. That is why we fear them.

Navalny, who was returning from treatment in Germany after an attack of a Soviet-era neurotoxin in 2020 during a Siberia visit in 2020, was arrested last year. Navalny accused Putin of the attack. The Kremlin refutes this accusation.

Yarmysh stated that Navalny was expecting the Lefortovo court to give the entire 13-year sentence requested by the prosecution, but that Navalny would still be working.

Alexei is not going to be kept in prison (an additional) 13 years. She said that Putin would not last this long.

“We now have the ability to communicate with Alexei, and he can monitor our activities from prison.”

Navalny, who was present at the hearings on March 15, struck an unusually defiant tone. She posted the following on Instagram: “If they consider the prison sentence the price for my human right of saying things that are important… then they have the option to ask me to serve 113 years.” “I will not give up my actions or words.”

Navalny has had many of his most important allies leave Russia to avoid being imprisoned or restricted at home.

Yarmysh, herself, is wanted. She fled Russia last year when a court ordered her to be restricted in movement for 18 more months. The claim was that she had violated COVID-19 safety rules.