Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says he has been charged with a new case and faces “up to 15 more years to my sentence” if found guilty.
Mr Navalny has been outspoken against President Vladimir Putin and was recently sentenced to nine years in prison after he was found guilty of large-scale fraud and contempt of court by a Russian court.
Antony Blinken, the US secretary of state, previously described the charges as dubious.
Mr Navalny, 45, wrote about the new charges on Twitter.
“It turns out that I created an extremist group in order to incite hatred towards officials and oligarchs,” he said.
“And when they put me in jail, I dared to be disgruntled about it (silly me) and called for rallies. For that, they’re supposed to add up to 15 more years to my sentence.”
Mr Navalny, who was born near Moscow in the then-Soviet Union, has long been Mr Putin’s most vocal critic within Russia.
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He was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Russia from Germany where he had spent time recovering from nerve agent poisoning.
The Russian opposition leader fell ill on a flight to Moscow and was subsequently found to have been poisoned with novichock.
Mr Navalny has blamed the poisoning on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied involvement.
He was put on trial and sentenced to nine years in prison in March.
After the sentencing, he wrote on Twitter that Vladimir Putin is “afraid of the truth”.
Concerns have since been raised about Mr Navalny’s health in jail, with reports prison authorities have refused to give him the right medication and not allowed his doctor to visit him behind bars.
Despite being imprisoned he has continued to speak out against the Kremlin, including against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine from jail, calling on fellow citizens to stage daily protests.
In June last year, a Russian court has banned groups linked to Mr Navalny after declaring them “extremist”.
