Russia orders arrest of Putin’s foe Yulia Navalnaya

A Russian court ordered Navalnaya’s arrest on Tuesday — an unlikely occasion since she no longer lives in Russia and has not returned to the country since her husband died suddenly in an Arctic prison in February.

Navalnaya has accused Russian President Vladimir Putin personally of murdering her husband and reiterated that allegation in response to her arrest form.

“When you write about this, please do not forget to write the main thing: Vladimir Putin is a murderer and war criminal,” Navalnya posted on X, which was earlier on Twitter. “His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a comfortable cell with a TV, but in Russia – in the same colony and in the same 2-by-3-by-3-meter cell in which he lives Alexey Killed,” he added.

The Kremlin has denied that Putin had any role in Navalny’s death and the Russian government issued a death certificate that cited herbal causes.

Meanwhile, lawyers for Kara-Murza, Putin’s main critic and Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence for treason, said on Wednesday they were competent in any case. To seek advice from him for the next six days in which he will not be contactable after his transfer to the prison hospital.

The lawyers asked for Kara-Murza to be spared from prison due to his poor fitness.

Navalnya is unlikely to ultimately end up in a Russian prison. However, the decision to issue an arrest warrant at the same time when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was visiting Moscow for a tour sent a noisy message to Putin’s critics, including Washington.

Unlike President Biden, who condemned Navalny’s death and declared Putin responsible for it, Modi said nothing on age. Asked about Navalny’s death, a spokesperson for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party described Bharat’s family members as being similar to Russia and also said Bharat had opposed Russia’s war in Ukraine.

The arrest warrant accused Navalny of participating in an “extremist” task force – her husband’s political and anti-corruption group – and demonstrated the Kremlin’s continued focus on Navalny, who has become Putin’s nemesis and most ambitious rival. , even as he died at the age of 47 in the coming months.

In 2020, Navalny survived a poisoning attack by Russian agents using a banned chemical weapon, but was arrested upon returning to Russia in January 2021 after treatment in a Berlin hospital. They were usually held in punitive isolation cells as the government added new charges and legal cases against them. Ultimately, he was transferred to the Polar Wolf prison colony near the Arctic Circle, where he died in February.

Navalnaya was her husband’s confidant and closest assistant for years, although she maintained a low profile, publicly stating that she was once ecstatic with their two children. However, she dramatically stepped back into the spotlight just hours after her husband’s death, and delivered a stunning speech to global leaders gathered at the Munich Security Conference.

“I want Putin and everyone around him, Putin’s friends, his government, to know that they will take responsibility for what they have done to our country, to my family and to my husband. And this day will come very soon,” she said.

A few days later, he released a video message urging Navalny’s supporters not to give up in the effort against Putin’s authoritarian regime in hopes of maintaining the momentum of Navalny’s movement. She mentioned that she would take charge as the head of that objective.

“I will continue the work of Alexei Navalny. … I want to live in a free Russia, I want to build a free Russia,” she said. “I ask you to share my anger. Rage, anger and hatred towards those who dare to destroy our future.”

A note from the Basmani court in Moscow did not specify the full nature of the charges, but they appear to be related to a 2021 ruling that declared three organizations founded by her husband as “extremist,” including an anti-corruption structure. Was also included. Which published more than one investigation into the illegal wealth and corrupt schemes of Putin’s close associates.

Those investigations, some of which are described in dramatic videos considered in thousands and thousands of examples on YouTube, prompted hundreds of Russians to take part in protests over the years.

The Russian government has slapped “extremist” labels on various sovereign activities and non-governmental organizations, suggesting they seek to undermine the country’s “constitutional order” – organizations that pose a challenge to Putin’s quarter-century rule. An indirect apology for ending.

Since Navalny’s funeral in March, which his widow was unable to wait for, Navalny has met with a number of global leaders, including Biden. In July, she was elected chair of the US-based Human Rights Substructure, a non-profit group that promotes human rights internationally.

Kara-Murza’s lawyers noted that the Russian government avoided visiting him at the sanatorium where he was taken. Kara-Murza, who suffers from fitness-related headaches after two poisonings, is imprisoned in the Siberian city of Omsk, more than 1,300 miles from Moscow.

One of his lawyers, Vadim Prokhorov, called again for Kara-Murza’s removal from the prison colony due to his uncertain scientific status.

“The health condition of Vladimir Kara-Murza is currently relatively stable. But he suffers from a serious chronic illness that prevents him from serving his sentence in the correctional colony – polyneuropathy,’ Prokhorov wrote in a Facebook post. The defect is a malfunction of the peripheral nerves throughout the frame.

In one of Kara-Murza’s most recent letters from prison, he wrote to a friend: “For me, as a historian, the present time generally reminds me very much of the ‘disappointing seven years’ of the end. Nicholas The darkest times of the reign of the first.”