2024-07-10 10:17:09
According to Russian media, a court in Moscow decided to arrest in absentia Yulia Navalny, opposition activist and widow of Alexei Navalny. The reason is her alleged participation in an extremist group. The ruling, according to Reuters, means Navalna will be certain to be arrested if she enters Russian territory.
In early July, Navalná became the chairwoman of the Human Rights Foundation, a non-governmental organization based in New York that aims to defend human rights and support liberal democracy. She succeeded Garry Kasparov, another critic of the Kremlin and chess grandmaster. After her appointment, she said she intended to continue her late husband’s work.
“When you write about the arrest warrant, don’t forget the main thing: Russian President Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal. His place is in prison. Not somewhere in The Hague in a cozy cell with a television, but in Russia. In the same colony and in the same cell two three meters, where he killed Alexey,” she responded on the decision on the X Network Navalná, who, according to available information, lives in Germany.
Alexei Navalny has been the face of the Russian opposition for years and has been a vocal critic of President Vladimir Putin’s regime, particularly for corruption. In 2020, he survived poisoning with the paralytic substance novichok, which he blamed on the Kremlin. He denied the accusation. After treatment in Berlin, Navalny returned to Russia in 2021, where he was arrested and sentenced to a long prison term in several trials. The oppositionist denied guilt and attributed his imprisonment to the regime’s efforts to silence all opponents and criticism. In mid-February, he died suddenly and under unclear circumstances in a penal colony in Siberia at the age of 47.
The Kremlin has denied any state involvement in Navalny’s death. In March, Putin described Navalny’s death as a sad event and said he was prepared to hand over the imprisoned politician to the West in a prisoner exchange, provided Navalny never returned to Russia. Navalny’s associates said that such negotiations did take place.
The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed people familiar with the case, wrote that the US secret services are inclined to believe that Putin apparently did not directly order Navalny to be killed. According to him, there is broad agreement within the intelligence community, including the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).