A Moscow court ordered the arrest of an important ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but Lithuania rejected the request to arrest him
MOSCOW – A Moscow court on Wednesday ordered the arrest of an important ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but Lithuania, where the associate lives, categorically rejected the requirement to take him into custody.
The action against Leonid Volkov by the Basmanny District Court was seen as part of an effort by the authorities to crack down on demonstrations demanding the release of Navalny, a major enemy of the Kremlin who has been in prison since January 17.
Volkov, Navalny’s chief strategist, has been accused of encouraging minors to participate in unauthorized rallies, which could lead to imprisonment for up to three years. He had previously been placed on an international wanted list.
Volkov, who has lived abroad since 2019, has rejected the charges, and the Lithuanian government has refused to comply with the order of the Russian court.
“Using international tools for processes for political reasons is a wrong practice,” said Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite.
“This raises serious doubts about Russia’s membership of these organizations,” she said, referring to the Russian arrest warrant sent by Interpol.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator who is the most prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous agent poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charge.
Protests across Russia drew tens of thousands of people to the streets for two consecutive weekends in January, the biggest display of discontent in years. More protests shook 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.
This stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny rejected as fabricated and which the European Court of Human Rights found illegal. He described his new arrest as “Putin’s personal vendetta” for surviving and exposing the assassination plan.
The authorities responded to the protests with strong repression, detaining about 11,000 people across Russia, many of whom were later fined or sentenced to prison terms ranging from 7 to 15 days. They also took steps to isolate key members of Navalny’s team, putting several of their top associates under house arrest for two months without access to the internet.
In a change of strategy amid repression, Volkov said last week that pro-Navalny demonstrations should stop until spring, arguing that an attempt to hold rallies each weekend would only lead to thousands of arrests and tire participants.
On Tuesday, however, he announced a new form of protest, asking residents of major cities to meet briefly in residential courtyards on Sunday with their cell phone lanterns on. He argued that the new tactics – similar to those used by anti-government protesters in neighboring Belarus – would prevent Russian shock troops from interfering and allow more people to participate without fear of repression. The protests in Belarus followed the re-election in August of the country’s autocratic president, Alexander Lukashenko, in a vote widely considered fraudulent.
Navalny’s arrest and crackdown on protests further heightened tensions between Russia and the West. The United States and the European Union urged Russia to release Navalny, but the Kremlin accused them of meddling in Russia’s internal affairs and warned that it would not listen to Western criticism of Navalny’s condemnation and police actions against his supporters.
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Associated Press writer Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania contributed.