WASHINGTON, 1 AUG – The United States has expressed concern about the investigation of Alexei Navalny that now threatens to repeat the story of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The opponent of Putin could be sentenced up to ten years in prison for “theft of timber.” “This follows investigations against other May 6 demonstrators and the trial of members of a punk band who have been held in detention since March. All of these developments raise serious concerns about the politically motivated prosecutions of the Russian opposition and pressure on those who express dissenting views,”said Patrick Ventrell, spokesman for the U.S. State Department. Navalny allegedly convinced the governor of the Kirov region to accept a disadvantageous deal in 2009, when he was a pro bono advisor. The case was closed in April but reopened in July on the orders of Alexander Bastrykin, head of the Investigative Committee“All these jokes about how Khodorkovsky stole all the oil and Navalny stole an entire forest — this is essentially what has happened,” said Navalny about the similarity between the cases of the two who tried to oppose the government of Vladimir Putin.