Alexei Navalny death latest: Putin brings criminal case against critic’s brother as mother pleads for body

Social media site X has claimed it suspended the account of Yulia Navalnaya after mistakenly flagging it as “violating our rules”.

“Our platform’s defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged

@yulia_navalnaya  as violating our rules,” it wrote.

“We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense.”

They did not clarify in what way they mistakenly believed Ms Navalnaya had broken the rules.

Poland’s Foreign Ministry has said it had summoned Russia’s ambassador over the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

“The ministry called on Russian authorities to take responsibility for the death of Alexei Navalny and conduct a full and transparent investigation to determine the circumstances and cause of his death,” the ministry said in a statement.

In a recorded message outside the “Polar Wolf” Arctic Circle penal colony on Tuesday (20 February), Lyudmila Navalnaya said: “I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, because the solution to this problem depends only on you.

“Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane way.”

Russian authorities have said they will not return Mr Navalny’s body for two weeks while they continue investigating his death.

Yulia Navalnaya’s X account has been restored just minutes after it was suspended.

The wife of Alexei Navalny created an account on Monday, quickly amassing nearly 100,000 followers.

Russia has initiated a new criminal case against Oleg Navalny, the brother of dead Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Tass state news agency reported on Tuesday.

TASS did not say under which article of the criminal code the case had been opened, but said police were searching for Oleg Navalny. who was already on the wanted list in connection with another matter.

In 2014, Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison for fraud in a case Kremlin critics said was trumped up and designed to pile pressure on his late brother.

X, formerly known as Twitter, has banned the account of Alexei Navalny’s widow.

Yulia Navalnaya set up her account on Monday. She has since used it to commit to holding Russian president Vladimir Putin to account.

For a decade and more, he and his team deployed a mix of tenacity and mockery to probe the Mafia-style financial links between those at the top of Russian politics, security and business, writes John Kampfner. Frozen out of state-controlled mainstream media, Navalny used every digital platform and every social media channel available to shine a light on Putin’s corrupt regime, surviving multiple poisonings and incarceration until he was finally – and inevitably – silenced by his greatest foe…

X, formerly Twitter, has suspended the account of Alexei Navalny’s widow. It is unclear why the social media network has removed her profile.

Yulia Navalnaya joined the platform on Monday, where she vowed to carry on the work of her husband and hold Russian president Vladimir Putin to account.

Mrs Navalnaya accused Putin of killing her husband with novichock poison and said evidence would be provided over the next few days. The Kremlin denied any involvement in his death.

Yulia Navalnaya vowed to continue her late husband’s fight against the Kremlin while authorities denied his mother access to a morgue where Mr Navalny’s body is believed to be held after his death last week at an Arctic penal colony.

Russian authorities said that the cause for his death on Friday at age 47 is still unknown.

Mr Navalny had been jailed since January 2021, when he returned to Russia after recuperating in Germany from poisoning with a Novichok-type nerve agent that he blamed on the Kremlin.