Russia puts Alexey Navalny and key associates on ‘terrorist and extremist’ list

Imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny and a number of his close associates have been added to Russia’s list of “terrorists and extremists.”

In addition to Navalny himself, the blacklist maintained by Rosfinmonitoring (Russia’s Federal Financial Monitoring Service) now includes his associates Lyubov Sobol, Vyacheslav Gimadi, Georgy Alburov, Liliya Chanysheva, and Ruslan Shaveddinov, among others. 

The bank accounts of people added to Rosfinmonitoring’s list of “terrorists and extremists” are frozen immediately. 

Rosfinmonitoring added Navalny’s chief of staff Leonid Volkov and former Anti-Corruption Foundation head Ivan Zhdanov to its list of “terrorists and extremists” earlier this month. Both Volkov and Zhdanov left Russia in 2021 and currently reside abroad.

In June 2021, the Moscow City Court outlawed Navalny’s political movement and his anti-corruption nonprofits as extremist organizations. Rosfinmonitoring blacklisted Navalny’s political network as “extremist” in April 2021, and added his anti-corruption nonprofits to the list in August 2021. 

In September 2021, the Russian Investigative Committee opened a criminal case against Alexey Navalny and his close associates on charges of creating and participating in an “extremist group.” In October, this case was combined with four other criminal cases initiated against the imprisoned opposition leader. 

Liliya Chanysheva — the former head of Navalny’s campaign office in Ufa — was arrested as the first suspect in the case in November 2021. She is currently in jail awaiting trial. If convicted, Chanysheva will face up to ten years in prison.