Russia wants to arrest Alexei Navalny’s widow after resistance leader died in prison

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny (left) and Russian President Vladimir Putin (right).

A Russian court has ordered the arrest of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of former political opposition leader Alexey Navalny.

The court accused Navalnaya of “participating in an extremist community,” according to The New York Times.

Navalny died in prison earlier this year in an Arctic penal colony, where he was imprisoned after the court convicted him of extremist activity.

Navalny ran for office in Russia as a reformist, accusing President Vladimir Putin of corruption.

“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 colony and the same 2 by 3-meter cell in which he killed Alexei,” Navalnaya wrote Tuesday on X, formerly known as Twitter, according to a translation provided by the platform.

Navalnaya has championed her deceased husband’s causes and has repeatedly accused Putin of murdering her husband. She has led his Anti-Corruption Foundation, which operates out of Lithuania and is considered “extremist” by Russian authorities, according to the Times.

Navalnaya has also been working on her husband’s memoir, which is due to be published in August.

Navalnaya has not been in Russia since 2021, but Russian officials said she would be arrested if she ever returned.

Her husband survived a poisoning attempt in 2020 and returned to Russia the following year, where he was promptly arrested and sent to a penal colony.

Navalnaya was arrested in 2021 before leaving Russia along with 1,600 protesters who were calling for Navalny to be released from prison.

In December last year, Navalny was located at a remote penal colony in the Arctic. In February, Russian officials announced Navalny had suddenly died.