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Russia has added this Tuesday to the opponent Alexéi Navalni to the blacklist of «terrorists and extremists», taking a new step in the repression of critical voices from the Kremlin. Navalni, who has been imprisoned for more than a year, and one of his closest collaborators who is in exile, Liubov Sobol, were placed on the list of ‘Rosfinmonitoring’, the financial surveillance service, AFP found.
According to the Anti-Corruption Fund, Navalni’s organization, which has been banned since June, and at least nine other people linked to the movement, were also added to the list. This decision is framed in a context of increasing repression against the opposition in Russia, both against politicians and the media and civil society actors critical of the president, Vladimir Putin.
In mid-January, two other top Navalni aides, Ivan Jdanov Y Leonid Volkov, who also went into exile, were blacklisted. “It’s great that these kinds of personalities come together to our super team of ‘terrorists’», joked on Twitter Jdanov, who heads Navalni’s organization. Sobol, 34, a lawyer close to the opponent who was a rising figure until his departure into exile, also questioned the decision. “Participate in elections and fight corruption? Extremist», he wrote on his Twitter account.
That list includes thousands of people and organizations banned in Russia, such as the jihadist group Daesh or the Afghan Taliban. Peter Stano, spokesman for the head of EU diplomacy, Josep Borrell, denounced “the continued repression against critical voices in Russian society.”
In another case involving Navalni, the prison administration demanded that his brother Oleg be jailed, accusing him of having violated the conditions of a suspended sentence for participating in the demonstrations for the release of the Russian opponent.
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Navalni was arrested on January 17, 2021 upon arrival in Moscow, after months of convalescence in Germany after being poisoned in Siberia, a fact for which the opponent blames Putin. Russia has not opened an investigation about this assassination attempt and considers that there is no evidence since it states that Germany has not shared the medical tests carried out on Navalni.
This staunch opponent of the Kremlin, 45, was sentenced on his return to Russia to a sentence of two and a half years in prison for a case of “fraud”, an accusation that he denounced as being politically motivated. His conviction sparked a barrage of international criticism and new Western sanctions against Russia. In addition, important institutions such as the European Parliament expressed their support for Nalvani, who received the Sakharov Prize for the defense of freedom of conscience in 2021.
Despite being in prison, Navalni continues to urge the Russians to stand firm, saying this month that “he doesn’t regret it for a second» of having returned to their country. His arrest sparked several days of protests a year ago, but these demonstrations were violently suppressed. In June, his political movement was banned and accused of “extremism.” Navalni himself is the subject of new legal proceedings for accusations of “extremism”, a cause that could keep him in prison for years.
The crackdown on Navalny’s supporters was followed a campaign against critical media and NGOs, who were designated as “foreign agents” a name that complicates their work and exposes them to legal problems. In December, the emblematic ONG Memorial, which works for the defense of human rights and the protection of the memory of the gulag, was banned by the justice system accused of not having complied with the controversial law on “foreign agents”.
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George is Digismak’s reported cum editor with 13 years of experience in Journalism