Russia provides Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny to ‘terrorists’ listing

Russia on Tuesday added jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and plenty of his allies to a listing of “terrorists and extremists”, as authorities additional clamp down on the opposition.

Navalny and a number of other allies, together with key aide Lyubov Sobol, appeared Tuesday in a database of banned people compiled by the Federal Service for Financial Monitoring (Rosfinmonitoring).The previous yr has seen an unprecedented crackdown on dissent in Russia, together with the jailing of President Vladimir Putin’s prime critic Navalny final January and the outlawing of his political organisations.Almost all of his prime allies, together with Sobol, have since fled the nation.According to Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation — which was declared extremist and shut down final yr — a dozen Navalny allies had been added to the listing on Tuesday.They embrace anti-corruption investigator Georgy Alburov, lawyer Vyacheslav Gimadi and a number of other former coordinators of Navalny’s regional workplaces that had been additionally branded extremist final yr.The resolution places them on a par with right-wing nationalist teams and international “terrorist” organisations, together with the Taliban and the Islamic State extremist group.Sobol, 34, was a lawyer for Navalny’s anti-corruption basis and producer of the opposition politician’s YouTube channel. She has been wished by Russian police since October.”Participated in elections and was fighting corruption? Extremist,” Sobol tweeted.’Super staff of terrorists’Earlier this month, two different key Navalny aides — Ivan Zhdanov and Leonid Volkov — had been added to the listing.They mocked the “terrorist” tag on Tuesday.Volkov, who used to supervise Navalny’s regional workplaces, tweeted that he was “proud to work in our team of ‘extremists and terrorists'”.”It’s great that our super team of ‘terrorists’ is being joined by such great people,” Zhdanov, who headed the now-disbanded Anti-Corruption Foundation, stated on Twitter.The United States and European Union each condemned the transfer, which comes amid excessive tensions over fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.”This latest designation represents a new low in Russia’s continuing crackdown on independent civil society,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price advised reporters in Washington.”We urge Russia to cease the abuse of ‘extremism’ designations to target nonviolent organizations, to end its repression of Mr. Navalny and his supporters, and to honour its international obligations to respect and ensure human rights and fundamental freedoms,” Price stated.Last month, investigators questioned a number of former regional Navalny coordinators, together with Ksenia Fadeyeva, who can be a lawmaker within the Siberian metropolis of Tomsk. She was additionally added to the “terrorists” listing on Tuesday.Navalny’s brotherSeparately, in an obvious try and put additional strain on the opposition, jail officers have requested a Moscow courtroom to transform a suspended sentence handed to Navalny’s brother Oleg into actual jail time.On Monday, Moscow’s Lyublinsky district courtroom registered that request.Last yr, Oleg Navalny was handed a one-year suspended sentence for breaking anti-coronavirus restrictions throughout protests demanding his brother’s launch.Navalny was detained in January 2021 on arrival from Germany, the place he was recovering from a nerve agent poisoning assault he and the West blame on the Kremlin.In February, he was jailed for greater than two years on outdated fraud costs.His poisoning and arrest sparked widespread condemnation overseas in addition to sanctions from Western capitals.The European Parliament final yr awarded Navalny the Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought after he was nominated however handed over for the Nobel Peace Prize.Investigators launched a brand new extremism probe in opposition to Navalny in 2021 that might see the opposition chief spend as much as 10 extra years in jail.Authorities have designated dozens of rights teams, media shops, journalists and anti-Kremlin figures “foreign agents”.In December, courts ordered the shutdown of the nation’s most outstanding rights group, Memorial.