Irish Daily Mirror

‘System error’ blocks Navalny widow’s posts

- BY CHRIS HUGHES

THE widow of deceased Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny had her X social media account briefly suspended yesterday.

Yulia, 47, who married the Russia of the Future leader in 2000, was using the platform to show how she will continue her husband’s campaign to “free Russia” from Vladimir Putin’s regime. Alexei died in prison last Friday.

Yesterday afternoon, her account was briefly not accessible to users.

X, formerly known as Twitter, said it was blocked mistakenly due to a system error.

A post on the site’s official safety account read: “Our platform’s defence mechanism against manipulati­on and spam mistakenly flagged

@yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules.

“We unsuspende­d the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defence.”

Ms Navalnaya created the account on Monday and has more than

100,000 followers.

She has used the platform, owned by South African tech billionair­e Elon Musk, to accuse Russian authoritie­s of waiting for traces of deadly Novichok poison to disappear from the body of her 47-year-old husband before releasing it.

The move came as President Putin issued an arrest warrant for Alexei’s brother, Oleg, 40. The Russian state news agency declared the

Ministry of Internal Affairs reported Oleg was being sought on an unspecifie­d charge.

He was already on the Ministry’s wanted list in connection with another case, in which he was accused of violating Russia’s Covid restrictio­ns by encouragin­g anti-government protests. Oleg, who has long been a steadfast supporter of his brother’s opposition movement, previously slammed the charge as politicall­y motivated.

 ?? ?? TOGETHER Alexei and his wife Yulia
TOGETHER Alexei and his wife Yulia
 ?? ?? FREEDOM Yulia in her online appeal
FREEDOM Yulia in her online appeal
 ?? ?? DOOMED Alexei in Russian jail
DOOMED Alexei in Russian jail

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