Moscow court issues arrest warrant for Yulia Navalnaya

A Moscow court has issued an arrest warrant against Yulia Navalnya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, on charges of participating in an “extremist organization.”

“Yulia [Navalnaya] has evaded the pretrial investigation authorities and, as a result, is declared wanted,” reads a statement from the court’s press agency. No criminal charges against Navalnaya had previously been reported.

Navalnaya lives outside of Russia. If she returns to the country or is extradited there, the court’s statement says, she will be arrested for two months. In a statement on social media, Navalnaya later asked journalists reporting on her arrest warrant to remind readers that Vladimir Putin is a “murderer and a war criminal” and said his place is “in prison, and not somewhere in The Hague, in a cozy cell with a TV set, but in Russia, in the same kind of penitentiary and the same kind of cramped cell where he killed Alexey.”

The Russian authorities outlawed Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation as an “extremist organization” in June 2021.