Photo: EPA-EFE/STEPHANIE LECOCQ
A Moscow court has arrested Russian opposition politician Yulia Navalnaya in absentia, according to a statement issued by the courts press service on Tuesday.
The statement says that Navalnaya is a defendant in a criminal case relating to “participation in an extremist community”, and will face arrest for two months if she travels to Russia.
“Yulia Borisovna has absconded from the bodies of preliminary investigation, in connection with which she is declared wanted,” the court said.
Navalnaya, the widow of late opposition leader Alexey Navalny who pledged to step into her husband’s shoes after his death in an Arctic penal colony in February, currently lives abroad.
In October 2019, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation was labelled a “foreign agent” by the Russian government and was declared an extremist organisation two years later.
Responding to the news on X on Tuesday, Navalnaya mocked the Russian authorities for not following “the usual procedure” and omitting to declare her a “foreign agent” before arresting her in absentia.
She also reminded her followers that “Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal. His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cosy cell with a TV, but in Russia — in the same colony and the same 2 by 3 metre cell in which he killed Alexey.”
