A Russian court on Tuesday ordered the arrest in absentia of Yulia B. Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei A. Navalny, who was a key figure in the country’s political opposition, accusing her of “participation in an extremist community.”
The court order against Ms Navalnaya, who left Russia in 2021, comes five months after her husband died in murky circumstances in a harsh Russian penal colony. He was jailed after being convicted on several trumped-up charges when he returned to Russia following a near-fatal attempt to poison him in August 2020.
Ms. Navalnaya has repeatedly accused Russian President Vladimir V. Putin of her husband’s murder and has vowed to continue his opposition work. She has become an outspoken critic of Russia’s war in Ukraine, using episodes such as a Russian missile that hit a children’s hospital in Kiev on Monday to blame Mr. Putin and the Kremlin for the bloodshed.
The statement from the Basmanny District Court news agency announcing the arrest warrant did not give the reason for the charges, but it appeared to be related to her role in helping to run the Navalny opposition organization. Although she avoided any overt political role while her husband was alive, Ms. Navalnaya long headed the advisory board of his Anti-Corruption Foundation.
The foundation, which has itself been labeled “extremist” and now operates as an international organization from exile in Lithuania, has repeatedly embarrassed Putin and other senior Kremlin officials by documenting the estates, yachts and other financial assets they acquired while in office.
The order to arrest Ms Navalnaya came from the Investigative Committee and the court statement said her name would be placed on an international wanted list. Ms Navalnaya left Russia in 2021. She would be arrested if she ever returns to Russia, the statement said.
Ms Navalnaya responded to the court’s ruling with a slightly mocking tone, noting in a post on the X social media platform that the court immediately resorted to the label ‘extremist’, without the usual intermediate steps such as ‘foreign agent’.
“When you write about this, don’t forget to mention the most important thing: Vladimir Putin is a murderer and a war criminal,” Ms. Navalnaya 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 colony and the same two-by-three-meter cell in which he murdered Alexei.”
Mrs. Navalnaya announced in April that she was helping to edit a manuscript her husband wrote while in prison. The book, which chronicles his political career, is expected to be released in the United States and elsewhere in October.
This month she also became chair of the Human Rights Foundation, a non-profit organization that advocates for human rights. He succeeds Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster, who has just completed his three-year term.
Milana Mazaeva contributed to the reporting.
