MOSCOW (TIP): Russia on July 11 added opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya to its list of “terrorists” and “extremists,” two days after it issued an arrest warrant for the exiled dissident.
Navalnaya has vowed to continue the work of her husband Alexei Navalny, Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s main opponent who died in an Arctic prison in unclear circumstances in February.
Her personal details appeared Thursday in an online blacklist maintained by Rosfinmonitoring, a state agency designed to combat the financing of people and organisations Moscow deems “terrorists” or involved in “extremist activity”.
Russian officials frequently apply such labels to opposition figures and those who campaign against the Kremlin or its offensive on Ukraine.
Navalny’s organisations were outlawed in Russia and are labelled “extremist.”
The opposition leader himself was sentenced to 19 years in prison on charges of “extremism.”
A court in the capital Moscow on Tuesday ordered Navalnaya arrested in absentia, also on charges of “extremism.”
Following her husband’s death, Navalnaya, 47, vowed to take up his work and has lobbied against Putin’s government from abroad.
“If they’re making such a fuss, then Yulia is doing everything right,” Kira Yarmysh, Navalnaya’s press secretary, said on social media after she was added to the blacklist. Navalnaya, an economist, stood by her husband as he galvanised mass protests in Russia, flying him out of the country when he was poisoned before defiantly returning to Moscow with him in 2021, knowing he would be jailed.
Like much of Russia’s opposition, Navalnaya lives in exile and would be detained if she set foot in Russia. (AFP)