File picture of Yulia Navalnaya, widow of late Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny
| Photo Credit: AP

A court in Russia ordered the arrest of the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a hearing Tuesday that was conducted in absentia as part of a sweeping Kremlin crackdown on the opposition.

Yulia Navalnaya, who lives abroad, would face arrest if and when she returns to Russia.

Moscow’s Basmanny District Court ruled to arrest Navalnaya on charges of alleged involvement in an extremist group.

Navalny, the fiercest political foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, died in February in an Arctic penal colony while serving a 19-year sentence on extremism charges that he had condemned as politically motivated. Authorities said he became ill after a walk but have otherwise given no details on Navalny’s death.

Navalny was imprisoned after returning to Moscow in January 2021 from Germany, where he had been recuperating from the 2020 nerve agent poisoning that he blamed on the Kremlin.

Ms. Navalnaya has accused Mr. Putin of her husband’s death and vowed to continue his activities. Russian officials have vehemently denied involvement in Navalny’s poisoning and death.

Ms. Navalnaya mocked the court’s order on social media platform X, saying that it’s Mr. Putin who should be be prosecuted. Her spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, described the court’s ruling as a recognition of her “merits.”

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz noted on X that Ms. Navalnaya is carrying on her husband’s legacy and denounced the Moscow court’s ruling as “an arrest warrant against the desire for freedom and democracy.”

Russian authorities haven’t specified the charges against Navalnaya. They appear to relate to authorities designating Navalny’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption as an extremist organization. The 2021 court ruling that outlawed Navalny’s group forced his close associates and team members to leave Russia.

A number of journalists have been jailed on similar charges in recent months in relation to their coverage of Navalny.

The Kremlin’s crackdown on opposition activists, independent journalists and ordinary Russians critical of it has intensified after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

After the shock of Alexei Navalny’s death in an Arctic prison, Russian dissidents in exile are vowing to pick up the pieces and press on with their battle against President Vladimir Putin’s rule.

“Of course we will cry in our bedrooms and bathrooms but publicly we’ll definitely continue fighting against the regime with all our methods,” Evgeny Nasyrov, coordinator of the Free Navalny campaign in Germany, said.

For Mr. Nasyrov, Opposition supporters must keep up the fight because seeing them “demotivated and scattered around” is exactly what Mr. Putin wants.

Mr. Nasyrov, who left Russia shortly before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, is part of Navalny’s team of Opposition supporters doing what they can to campaign from outside Russia.

He has been pounding the phone lines to Russia, trying to rouse people to head to the polls at noon on March 17, the final day of voting in the presidential election, in a show of strength against Mr. Putin.

“Even if people won’t vote, even if they’re not Russian, we want there to be crowds,” said Mr. Nasyrov, who is also urging people in Russia to talk about the war in Ukraine.

‘Bigger challenge’

But while continuing the movement’s activities is one thing, redefining what it stands for without Navalny as a figurehead will be a bigger challenge.

The 47-year-old was in many ways the only unifying force for a group of disparate figures bound together only by their Opposition to Putin and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Marat Gelman, a Russian art collector and gallerist who now lives in Berlin, said his emotions had been running high since the news of Navalny’s death. “At first I thought I should stop thinking about Russia, concentrate on my work and think about how to organise a new life,” the longtime Kremlin critic said. But after the initial shock had subsided, Mr. Gelman found himself inspired by the courage of Navalny’s widow Yulia Navalnaya.

Three days after her husband’s death, Ms. Navalnaya posted a video vowing to continue her husband’s fight “for the freedom of our country”, rekindling the hopes of many Russians.

“Yulia has changed everything,” said Mr. Gelman, who believes that Navalnaya could be an even more powerful figure than her husband, because she is a woman.

“Putin’s machismo works well with men, but it does not work with women. The face of anti-war Russia must be that of a woman,” he said.

“She can rely on my support,” said exiled opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov, currently travelling around Europe to establish contacts with the European authorities.

“I hope this strategy will be the motivating point to coordinate our activity all together,” he said.

Mr. Gudkov, who was a guest at Navalny’s wedding and once co-led demonstrations with him, said he hoped as many Russians as possible would heed the call to rally on March 17.

“We can’t influence numbers in the ballot, but we can show queues of people.” he said. “I hope that if millions of people gather then it could undermine the legitimacy of Putin,” he added.

Although the initiative was not the brainchild of Navalny himself, he and his closest allies endorsed it in a rare display of unity for an often fractured Opposition.

Back in Russia, jailed Opposition politician Vladimir Kara-Murza on Thursday also urged Russians to keep fighting for democracy despite Navalny’s death.

“I still cannot comprehend what has happened, rationally or emotionally. But if we give in to gloom and despair, that’s exactly what they want. We have no right to do that, we owe it to our fallen comrades,” Kara-Murza said.

Navalny’s confidence

Sergei Guriev, a former economic adviser to the Russian government who now lives in exile in France, said he exchanged letters with Navalny before his transfer from the prison near Moscow to the remote jail where he died.

What struck him the most was “his confidence that Russia should be and will be a democratic and peaceful country”, Mr. Guriev said.

Mr. Nasyrov recalled meeting Navalny in 2017, when he came to open a regional office for his movement in Chelyabinsk.

“He came only with one bodyguard, it was not enough in the crowd. I asked, ‘Are you not concerned about your security?’ He joked, ‘Will you not defend me?’”