A Moscow court has ordered the arrest of a top ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but Lithuania has rejected the demand for his arrest.
MOSCOW – A court in Moscow on Wednesday ordered the arrest of an ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but Lithuania, where the aide lives, flatly rejected the claim to arrest him.
The action against Leonid Volkov by the Basmanny district court was seen as part of an attempt by authorities to dispel protests and demand the release of Navalny, a leading enemy in the Kremlin who has been jailed since January 17.
Volkov, a chief strategist at Navalny, has been accused of encouraging minors to take part in unauthorized rallies, which could put him in jail for up to three years. He has already been placed on an international wish list.
Volkov, who has been living abroad since 2019, dismissed the charges and the Lithuanian government refused to carry out the Russian court order.
“The use of international instruments for politically motivated prosecution is a misuse,” said Home Affairs Minister Agne Bilotaite.
“This raises serious doubts about Russia’s membership in these organizations,” she said, referring to the Russian arrest warrant sent by Interpol.
Navalny, 44, a corruption investigator who is the main critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has been arrested after returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning. which he blames the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied the allegations.
Protests across Russia drew tens of thousands of people to the streets in January for two weekends in the greatest displeasure in years. More protests shocked Moscow and St. Petersburg after a Moscow court on February 2 sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation while recovering in Germany.
It stems from a 2014 conviction that Navalny rejected as fabricated and that the European Court of Human Rights found illegal. He described his new prison sentence as “Putin’s personal revenge” for surviving and exposing the assassination.
Authorities responded to the protests with widespread repression and detained about 11,000 people across Russia, many of whom were later fined or sentenced to 7 to 15 days in prison. They also moved to isolate key members of Navalny’s team, placing several of its top comrades under house arrest for two months without internet access.
In a strategy shift amid the repression, Volkov said last week that the pro-Navalny protests should be suspended until spring, arguing that an attempt to maintain rallies every weekend would only lead to thousands of arrests and participants worn out.
On Tuesday, however, he announced a new form of protest and urged residents of large cities to gather briefly in residential courtyards on Sunday with their cell phone flashlights turned on. He argued that the new tactics – similar to those used by protesters against the government in neighboring Belarus – would prevent the Russian riot police from interfering and that more people could participate without fear of repression. The protests in Belarus follow the re-election of the country’s longtime autocratic president Alexander Lukashenko in August in the vote, which is widely regarded as rude.
Navalny’s arrests and protests have fueled tensions between Russia and the West. The United States and the European Union have called on Russia to release Navalny, but the Kremlin has accused it of interfering in Russia’s internal affairs and warned it that it will not respond to Western criticism of Navalny’s sentencing and police action against its supporters. do not listen.
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Associated Press author Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania, contributed.