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Russia adds Navalny to list of terrorists

Dasha LitvinovaAP
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his allies have been declared terrorists by Russia's government
Camera IconOpposition leader Alexei Navalny and his allies have been declared terrorists by Russia's government Credit: AP

Russian authorities have added imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny and some of his top allies to the country's registry of terrorists and extremists, the latest move in a multi-pronged crackdown on opposition supporters, independent media and human rights activists.

Navalny, Russian President Vladimir Putin's fiercest critic, and eight of his allies -- including top aides Lyubov Sobol and Georgy Alburov -- were on Tuesday added to the registry by Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service.

The law requires the bank accounts of those on the list be frozen.

The move comes just a over a year after Navalny's arrest, which triggered a wave of the biggest mass protests across the country in years.

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The politician was detained upon his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied any involvement.

Navalny was ordered to serve two-and-a-half years in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence stemming from a 2014 fraud conviction.

In the following months, Navalny's brother Oleg and many of his top allies also faced criminal charges, and the authorities outlawed his Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a sprawling network of regional offices as extremist, paralysing their operations.

Russian authorities have also ratcheted up pressure on independent media and human rights groups in recent months. Dozens have been labelled as foreign agents -- a designation that implies additional government scrutiny and strong pejorative connotations that discredit the recipient.

The authorities on Tuesday also petitioned the court to have Oleg Navalny serve his one-year suspended sentence in prison. Last year Oleg, together with his brother's top allies, was convicted of violating coronavirus regulations over the protests in support of the politician, and handed a one-year suspended sentence.

The crackdown on Alexei Navalny and other dissenting voices in Russia has elicited outrage in the West.

On Tuesday, European Union foreign affairs spokesman Peter Stano reiterated that "This is not acceptable, that we see this as a continued repression against the critical voices in Russian society."

The US State Department called the designation of Navalny's group "troubling" and a "new low" in the government's moves against opposition figures.

"Russian authorities already have effectively criminalised one of the country's remaining independent political movements with their earlier designation of Navalny-affiliated organisations as 'extremists,'" department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

"This latest designation represents a new low in Russia's continuing crackdown on independent civil society."

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