MOSCOW — Aleksei A. Navalny, Russia’s most prominent political opposition leader, delivered an emotional speech on Friday in response to a prosecutor’s closing arguments demanding that Mr. Navalny be convicted on embezzlement charges and sentenced to six years in prison. A co-defendant, Pyotr Ofitserov, faced a five-year sentence. With the court proceedings in Kirov, a regional capital, streamed live on the Internet, Mr. Navalny delivered a rhetorical broadside against the Kremlin, in which he said his opposition work would not stop, and sought to rally public support. “I cannot run away from myself,” he said. “I have nothing else but this.” The judge said a verdict would be issued on July 18.

Following are Mr. Navalny’s remarks, translated by Nikolai Khalip of The New York Times.

Dear friends,

Our remarkable trial resembling a TV series — and sometimes it looks like a TV series resembling a trial — is coming to an end. I am not even trying to insult the court by calling the trial a TV series, because it really resembles a TV series. And I doubt anyone here has ever been or will have a chance to be present at such an event, especially taking into account that all of us including myself know perfectly well that the main purpose of this trial was similar to a TV series: to make it so that the federal channels could mention my name in the news in the context that this is the man who stole all timber in the Kirov region, that this is that swindler. As if this can change all that I write about the swindlers who really steal billions from all of us and who seized the power in our country.

When I am speaking about a TV series I am trying to define the genre: is it a comedy or a drama? I could have taken it in a more ironic way if there had not been some other people involved who add a dramatic character to it. And in the first place I would like to apologize to Pyotr Ofitserov and his family because now they have to pass through this because of me. They – quite accidentally – have become hostages and now are going through all this. Just because somebody had to be linked to me. To put a person in prison for an economic crime, an entrepreneur was needed, and Pyotr Ofitserov turned out to be this entrepreneur.