Allies of Kremlin critic Navalny to stay under house arrest until mid-summer

Kira Yarmysh, spokeswoman for Alexei Navalny, is not allowed to use the internet or talk to anyone other than her lawyer under the harsh terms of her house arrest

Credit: Mikhail Tereshchenko/Tass via Getty Images

A Moscow court has ordered four allies of Alexei Navalny to stay under house arrest for another three months, in the latest move by the Kremlin to clamp down on opposition.

Russia has seen widescale anti-government unrest since Mr Navalny, who was poisoned last summer and taken to Germany for treatment, returned to Russia in January and was arrested.

The country was roiled by three weeks of nationwide anti-government protests, openly encouraged by Mr Navalny and his team.

The demonstrations led to a record 11,000 detentions and authorities are also now pressing charges against Mr Navalny’s most prominent allies in Moscow. His closest associates remain abroad and out of reach for Russian law enforcement.

A total of 10 people linked to the opposition figure are facing charges of inciting citizens to break coronavirus restrictions and creating a potential health hazard over their calls for protests.

Four of them, including his spokesman Kira Yarmysh and head of the Moscow office Oleg Stepanov, were supposed to be released from house arrest on Thursday, but a court extended the measure until June 23.

Ms Yarmysh has been allowed to move to a different address as requested but is still not allowed to go on walks, use the internet or talk to anyone except for her legal team, her lawyer Veronika Polyakova told The Telegraph.

“She’s in a complete information vacuum,” Ms Polyakova said.

The case against the 10 pro-Navalny figures is being handled by two dozen investigators at Russia’s equivalent of the FBI, which typically deals with high-profile violent crimes.

“This investigation has been launched not because there is something to investigate, but for the sole purpose of isolating these people and confining them to their flats,” said Vladimir Voronin, lawyer for politician Lyubov Sobol, another of those arrested.

The charges have put the Russian opposition in a bind ahead of parliamentary elections in September.

Several members of Mr Navalny’s team, including Ms Sobol, want to run for seats in the Duma elections. But while they can technically still be on the ballot, their canvassing efforts will be severely hampered by their absence from the streets.

Mr Navalny himself was moved earlier this week to a notorious prison colony about 120 kilometres east of the Russian capital after a Moscow court last month sentenced him to nearly three years in prison.

He was found guilty of breaking the terms of his suspended sentence while he was convalescing from a near-fatal poisoning last year that he blames on the Kremlin. The Kremlin has denied any involvement.