Russia has sentenced three lawyers who defended Alexei Navalny to several years in prison for conveying the late opposition leader's message to outsiders.

The case comes amid a widespread crackdown on dissent during the Ukraine offensive, alarming rights groups who fear Moscow will step up trials of legal representatives in addition to jailing its clients.

Even after Navalny's unexplained death in an Arctic prison colony last February, the Kremlin sought to punish his associates.

Vadim Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were arrested by a court in the town of Petushki Found guilty of participating in an "extremist organization".

Kobzev, the most high-profile member of Navalny's legal team, was sentenced to five and a half years in prison, Liptzer to five years and Sergunin to three and a half years in prison.

The verdicts sparked outrage in the West.

The three were almost the only ones to visit the prison during Navalny's 19-year sentence.

Putin's main political rival, Navalny, communicates with the world through his lawyers passing messages, which his team then posts on social media.

Passing letters and messages through lawyers is normal practice in Russian prisons.

Navalny's exiled widow, Yulia Navalnaya, said the lawyers were "political prisoners and should be released immediately."

The United States, Britain, France and Germany have criticized the verdicts.

"This is yet another example of the Kremlin's persecution of defense lawyers in an effort to undermine human rights, subvert the rule of law and silence dissent," State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a statement.

British Foreign Secretary David Lamy called on the Kremlin to "release all political prisoners."

France's foreign ministry called the court's ruling "another act of intimidation against the entire legal profession", while Germany said "even those who want to defend others before the law face severe persecution".

The lawyers were sentenced after a closed trial in Petushki, about 70 miles east of Moscow, near Pokrov Prison, where Navalny was held before being transferred to a remote colony above the Arctic Circle. There.

"We are on trial for passing on Navalny's ideas to others," Kobzev said in court last week, Novaya Gazeta reported.

A statement from the court said the three "used their status as lawyers during visits to the criminal Navalny... to ensure the regular flow of messages between members of the extremist community, including those wanted and hiding outside the Russian Federation, and Navalny" .

This allegedly allowed Navalny to plot "crimes with extremist characteristics" in his maximum-security prison.

In his speech, Navalny denounced the Kremlin's offensive against Ukraine as "criminal" and told supporters "not to give up."

He denounced the arrest of his lawyer in October 2023 as an effort to further isolate him.

Kobzev last week compared Moscow’s current crackdown on dissent to the massive crackdowns of the Stalin era.

"Eighty years have passed... and in the Petushki court, people are once again being tried for smearing officials and state institutions," he said.

The human rights group OVD, which monitors political repression in Russia, said the sentences showed Moscow now intends to make protecting political prisoners - a practice that is still allowed but has become more difficult - downright dangerous.

"The authorities have now essentially outlawed the defense of politically persecuted people," the group said, a move that "risks undermining what remains of the rule of law."