Russian opposition activist Andrei Pivovarov was on Friday sentenced to four years in prison by a court in southern Russia for cooperating with a banned pro-democracy group, his supporters said. Pivovarov, 40, is the former executive director of Open Russia, a now disbanded pro-democracy group established by exiled tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky. He is the latest critic of President Vladimir Putin to be sent to prison, with Moscow seeking to snuff out any last vestiges of dissent amid its offensive in Ukraine. “Andrei Pivovarov was sentenced to four years in a standard-regime penal colony,” his aides wrote on Facebook. Pivovarov helped spearhead a campaign against Putin’s controversial changes to the constitution, adopted in 2020, that allow him to stay in power until 2036. Pivovarov’s arrest in May 2021 shocked many allies, as he was yanked off a Warsaw-bound plane in Saint Petersburg when it was already on the runway. The activist was then brought to Russia’s southern city of Krasnodar, where he was charged with cooperating with an “undesirable” organisation.