2 Putin critics in dire straits this week

Two prominent figures who have openly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin are in trouble this week: one by the courts and the other by illness.

A Russian court on Wednesday found political opponent Alexei Navalny guilty in the retrial of a 2013 fraud case, which formally disqualifies him as a candidate for president next year.

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Navalny, who’s described Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party as “the party of crooks and thieves,” was convicted of embezzlement.

The 2013 case had been overturned by the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled that Russia violated Navalny’s right to a fair trial. That led to this year’s retrial and today’s verdict.

Navalny’s lawyer says he continues to plan to run against Putin in the election in 2018 despite the verdict.

During a break in the proceedings, Navalny told reporters that he and his lawyers were comparing this verdict with the text of the 2013 verdict and found them to be identical.

“You can come over and see that the judge is reading exactly the same text, which says a lot about the whole trial,” Navalny told reporters, adding that even the typos in the names of companies were identical in both rulings.

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The 2013 verdict initially barred Navalny from running for mayor of Moscow, but he eventually was allowed to run, and came in second.

The unusual move was seen by observers as the Kremlin’s decision to allow him to run against its candidate in the mayoral race in order to make the election look legitimate.

The news of Navalny’s verdict came just days after another Putin critic fell into a coma after being diagnosed with “acute poisoning by an undefined substance” the Guardian reports.

Vladimir Kara-Murzas was screening a documentary about another opposition leader who was killed in 2015. He has been critical of Putin in the past, and vocal about what he called the Kremlin’s policy of assassinating political enemies.

His wife, Yevgeniya Kara-Murzas, told the Guardian he was in stable but critical condition.

While Russian-born Kara-Murzas lives in the U.S., he was travelling in Russia to show the movie, and was planning on returning last Thursday when he fell ill.

This is the second time in two years that he became sick in Russia, his wife said.

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She also called on U.S. President Donald Trump, who recently said he respected Putin, to reconsider his position,  saying he should realize that a true leader wouldn’t allow someone to be “poisoned because of their beliefs.”

Trump’s comment came during a Fox News interview in which interviewer Bill O’Reilly described Putin as “a killer.”

The Kremlin first asked for an apology from the TV show host, but then shrugged it off when O’Reilly refused to apologize.

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Russia checks readiness for ‘time of war’

Vladimir Putin has also ordered a snap combat readiness check of Russia’s Air Force on Tuesday.

That means the government is checking whether troops are ready for combat, as well as ensuring that weapons systems are in “compliance with the standards of placing them on heightened combat alert,” deputy defense minister Alexander Fomin told Russia’s Tass news agency.

Special attention should be paid to combat alert, deployment of air defense systems for a time of war and air groupings’ readiness to repel the aggression,” Russian Defense MinisterShoigu said Tuesday.

The government also announced that it will use Iran’s military infrastructure to fight terrorists, if both Tehran and Moscow deem it necessary.

— With files from Reuters and The Associated Press