Russia’s Navalny says he faces three new criminal probes

New investigations could result in a longer sentence for the Kremlin critic, his allies fear.

Russia has launched three new criminal investigations against Alexey Navalny, the jailed Kremlin critic has claimed, a move his allies fear could keep him behind bars for many more years. In an Instagram post on Tuesday, Navalny said he had learned about the cases from an investigator who visited him in custody a day earlier. The 44-year-old is currently imprisoned in a penal colony east of Moscow, serving a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence for alleged parole violations relating to a 2014 embezzlement conviction he dismisses as fabricated.