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Julija Navalnaya: Wants to continue her husband's fight
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Yves Herman / dpa
The online service X (formerly Twitter) has blocked the account of the widow of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, who died in custody, for some time. The message appeared on Yulia Navalnaya’s account: “Account blocked. X will block accounts that violate our rules."
The Fund to Fight Corruption (FBK), founded by Navalny, then also posted an appeal to the owner Elon Musk on According to a report by the Reuters news agency, X justified the incident as an oversight. The platform's defense mechanism against manipulation and spam had previously incorrectly flagged Yulia Navalnaya's account as violating the rules. When the error was noticed, the account was activated again.
Julija Navalnaya only registered with X on Monday. On the same day, she publicly accused Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin of being behind her husband's death. Among other things, she announced that she wanted to continue Navalny's fight against the power apparatus in Russia. Within one day, the number of readers at X rose to 90,000. As a result, access to Navalnaya's entry was initially restricted. Readers could only reach him with a direct link. Then later the entire profile was blocked for about an hour. According to media reports, even after the closure was lifted, access remained limited.
Navalny died on Friday in the prison camp with the unofficial name “Polar Wolf” in the Siberian Arctic region of Yamal. Much is unclear about the circumstances of his death. The Kremlin critic was 47 years old at the time of his death. To this day, the authorities have denied his relatives access to his body, despite international protests. Navalny's team, which accuses the Russian power apparatus of murder, sees this as an attempted cover-up.
lph/sol/AFP/Reuters