Screenshot: Populyarnaya Politika / YouTube
Russian authorities added several allies of late opposition leader Alexey Navalny to its federal registry of “terrorists and extremists” on Friday, exactly six months after his death in prison.
Among those added to the list compiled by Russia’s financial watchdog Rosfinmonitoring are Yulia Navalnaya’s — and formerly her husband’s — press secretary Kira Yarmysh and Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation.
In a picture posted to her X account where she is seen posing with Yarmysh, Pevchikh poked fun at her addition to the list, writing, “Please include this photo in all news, where the threat of mine and Kira’s terrorist activities are especially obvious”.
Photo: Maria Pevchikh on X
Also added to the list were Navalny’s former lawyers Alexander Fedulov and Olga Mikhailova, who have both left Russia to avoid prosecution, along with the host of Navalny’s YouTube channel Dmitry Nizovtsev and the channel’s producer Nina Volokhonskaya, both also in exile.
The register also includes three people currently imprisoned in Russia on “extremist” charges for their alleged ties to Navalny: two journalists, Antonina Favorskaya and Olga Komleva, and activist Alexey Malyarevsky.
The additions come after Navalny’s widow Yulia was added to the government list herself and arrested in absentia for “participation in an extremist community” in July.
Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, now based in Lithuania, was labelled “a foreign agent” by the Russian government in 2019 and declared an extremist organisation two years later, making it illegal for Navalny supporters to operate in Russia.
Friday marked six months since Navalny’s sudden death in an Arctic prison in February, as his family and supporters laid flowers on his grave at the Borisovskoye cemetery in Moscow.
Navalnaya, who has pledged to continue her husband’s work, announced on Thursday that Russian investigators had refused to open a criminal case into his death, insisting he had died of “arrhythmia”, brought on by a “combination of illnesses”. Navalnaya called the diagnosis “an act of mockery” and “a pathetic attempt” to cover up his murder.
