LONDON, May 24 (Reuters) – Jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny on Tuesday lambasted President Vladimir Putin in a live court hearing, casting him as a madman who had started a “stupid war” in Ukraine based on lies.
“This is a stupid war which your Putin started,” Navalny told an appeal court in Moscow via video link from a corrective penal colony. “This war was built on lies.”
“One madman has got his claws into Ukraine and I do not know what he wants to do with it – this crazy thief,” Navalny said of Putin.
The Kremlin has repeatedly dismissed Navalny’s claims about Putin, who it says has won numerous fair elections in Russia since 2000 and remains by far the country’s most popular politician. (Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Mark Trevelyan)
