A court in Moscow has issued an arrest warrant on extremism charges for Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Navalnaya, 47, fled Russia in 2021 after her husband was arrested on politically motivated charges, with a sweeping crackdown launched on his FBK anti-corruption movement. She would probably face more than a decade in prison if she returned.
The Kremlin routinely accuses its political rivals of extremism, a byword for opposition to President Putin.
Navalny died in an Arctic prison in February. His supporters say he was killed on Putin’s orders.
Navalnaya said: “Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal. His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV, but in Russia, in the same 2m-by-3m cell in which he killed Alexei.”
Vyacheslav Gimadi, a lawyer for the FBK, said that the Basmanny district court had not produced any evidence or case materials before ordering Navalanya’s arrest in absentia.
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An economist, Navalnaya has vowed to continue her husband’s struggle against Putin. However, with its leading figures either dead, in prison or in exile, Russia’s opposition movement has few opportunities to challenge Putin’s 24-year grip on power.
Navalnaya has spoken out against the war in Ukraine, denouncing the Russian missile strike on Monday on a children’s hospital in Kyiv as “a terrible crime” by Putin and his inner circle.
The US-based Human Rights Foundation appointed Navalnaya as its chairwoman last week.
The court ruling against her came after Yevgeniya Berkovich, a theatre director, and Svetlana Petriychuk, a playwright, were jailed for six years over an award-winning play about women marrying jihadists in Syria that prosecutors said justified terrorism.
They were sentenced behind closed doors at a military court. Defence lawyers said they were being punished for Berkovich’s poems about the war in Ukraine.
