MOSCOW (AP) – A court in Moscow on Wednesday ordered the arrest of a top ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, but Lithuania, where the employee lives, flatly rejected demands to take him into custody.
The action against Leonid Volkov by the Basmanny District Court was seen as part of an attempt by the authorities to suppress demonstrations demanding the release of Navalny, a top Kremlin enemy imprisoned since January 17.
Volkov, a chief strategist for Navalny, was charged with encouraging minors to participate in unauthorized rallies, which could land him up to three years in prison. He was already on an international wanted list.
Volkov, who has been living abroad since 2019, has dismissed the charges and the Lithuanian government has refused to execute the order of the Russian court.
“Using international instruments for politically motivated prosecution is a wrong practice,” said Lithuanian Interior Minister Agne Bilotaite.
“This raises serious doubts about Russia’s membership in these organizations,” she said, referring to the Russian arrest warrant sent via Interpol.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and the most prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on his return from Germany, where he recovered for five months from a nerve poisoning he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
Protests across Russia drew tens of thousands to the streets in January for two consecutive weekends in January, the biggest show of discontent in years. More protests shook Moscow and St. Petersburg after a court in Moscow on Feb. 2 sentenced Navalny to two years and eight months in prison for violating the terms of his probation during his recovery in Germany.
That stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny dismissed as fabricated and declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights. He described his new imprisonment as “Putin’s personal revenge” for surviving and uncovering the murder plot.
Authorities responded to protests with a large-scale crackdown, detaining about 11,000 people across Russia, many of whom were later fined or given 7 to 15 days in prison. They also moved to isolate key members of Navalny’s team, putting several of his top employees under house arrest for two months without internet access.
In a strategy shift amid the crackdown, Volkov said last week that the pro-Navalny demonstrations should pause until spring, arguing that attempting to hold rallies every weekend would only lead to thousands of additional arrests and participants. wear down.
On Tuesday, however, he announced a new form of protest, urging residents of major cities to gather briefly in residential areas on Sunday with their cell phone flashlights on. He argued that the new tactics – similar to those of anti-government protesters in neighboring Belarus – would prevent Russian riot police from intervening and allowing more people to participate without fear of repression. The protests in Belarus follow the August reelection of the country’s autocratic president, Alexander Lukashenko, who was widely regarded as forged.
Navalny’s arrest and crackdown on protests have further fueled tensions between Russia and the West. The United States and the European Union have urged Russia to release Navalny, but the Kremlin has accused them of meddling in Russia’s internal affairs and has warned it will not listen to Western criticism of Navalny’s conviction and police actions against his supporters.
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Associated Press writer Liudas Dapkus in Vilnius, Lithuania, contributed.