The trio were arrested as authorities intensified pressure on the jailed Kremlin critic, who died last February.

Arrested in 2023, the lawyers were charged with extremism for relaying messages from Alexei Navalny while he was in prison before his death.

Russia on Friday sentenced three lawyers who had defended Alexey Navalny to several years in prison for bringing messages from the late opposition leader from prison to the outside world. The sentences come as Russia -- in the midst of a massive crackdown during its Ukraine offensive -- seeks to punish Navalny's associates since his unexplained death in an Arctic prison colony last February.

Russia’s war on Ukraine has been dictated as much by events in the air as by territorial gains on the front line.

A Russian missile attack on Friday killed no fewer than four people and partially destroyed an educational facility in the city of Kryvyi Rih in southern-central Ukraine. The governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region,