Russian arrest order for Navalny’s widow hit
BERLIN—German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has criticized Russia’s move to issue an arrest warrant for exiled opposition figure Yulia Navalnaya as antidemocratic.
The arrest order is a “warrant against the desire for freedom and democracy,” Scholz said on X, formerly Twitter. “After the death of her husband Alexei Navalny, she carries on his legacy.”
A court in Moscow on Tuesday ordered Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of late Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny, arrested in absentia for two months.
The court accused Navalnaya, who lives outside Russia, of participating in an “extremist” group. The decision means she would face certain arrest if she set foot in the country.
Navalnaya, 47, has stepped into the spotlight following her husband’s death in an Arctic penal colony in February and said she will continue the fight for what Navalny called the “beautiful Russia of the future.”
Writing on X on Tuesday, Navalnaya told her supporters to focus not on the court order against her, but on the battle against Russian President Vladimir Putin.
‘Murderer’
“When you write about this, please don’t forget to write the main thing: Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal,” she wrote.
“His place is in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV, but in Russia—in the same (penal) colony and the same 2 by 3 meter cell in which he killed Alexei.”
The Kremlin has denied ordering Navalny killed.
Since her husband’s death, Navalnaya has met a number of senior Western leaders, including US President Joe Biden in San Francisco.
The US-based nonprofit group Human Rights Foundation named Navalnaya its chair last week, and she said she would use the new role to step up her the struggle waged by her husband against Putin.
“We will take on board everything that can be useful to fight Putin, to fight for the beautiful Russia of the future,” Navalnaya said on X.
Navalny’s organizations have been outlawed in Russia, labeled an “extremist” group and put on an official “terrorist” list.
Navalnaya, an economist, stood by her husband as he galvanized 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.
Following his death, Navalnaya vowed to take up her late husband’s work and has lobbied against Putin’s government from abroad.
During Russian elections in March, Navalnaya called for mass protests against Putin by forming long queues outside voting stations. —reports from AFP, Reuters
