Prominent Russian opposition activist Alexei Navalny said on Saturday the jail sentence handed to a man protesting against President Vladimir Putin highlighted the government's harsh approach to dissent.
Fitness club manager Maxim Luzyanin, the first of 17 people arrested during a protest on the eve of Putin's inauguration in May, was sentenced to 4 1 /2 years on Friday for "mass disorder" and violence against the police.
"If earlier there were minor administrative arrests, soft harassment, now - jail time," Navalny, one of the top faces during the past year of protests against Putin's 12-year rule, told a Russian online news site.
"The time has passed when they were afraid to jail because they didn't want people to think about '37," the blogger added, referring to Great Purge of 1937, a year of mass political repressions and murders orchestrated by Joseph Stalin.
Opposition activists say Bolotnaya could achieve the notoriety of the Pussy Riot trial, in which three members of the band were sentenced to two years in jail for performing an anti-Putin song.
