The western media is now carrying the story of a protest on the streets of Manezh Square in Moscow which occurred on Tuesday, December 30th. At the center of the rally was Alexei Navalny, self-proclaimed “anti-corruption” blogger and head of the largest opposition movement of the leadership of Vladimir Putin and his administration in Russia. Navalny was just convicted of defrauding a cosmetics company of about $440,000 and given a suspended sentence of 3 1/2 years. Relating to the same case, his brother, Oleg, will be sent to prison for the same period of time. In 2013, Alexei Navalny was also tried and convicted of embezzling over $500,000 from the state-owned timber company Kirovles, where Navalny worked as a volunteer in 2009.

Read more: Meet Alexei Navalny: The U.S. State Department’s inside man for ‘regime change’ in Russia