On 9th June, 2021, Wednesday, the organisations created by opposition leader Alexei Navalny were declared extremist by a Russian court. The Court ruled that the Citizens' Rights Protection Nonprofit and FBK, an anti-corruption foundation, should be abolished.
It also prohibited Navalny's campaign offices from operating after classifying them as extremists, according to Sputnik. “The judgement addressing the termination of these organisations' activity takes effect straightaway,” the Court stated. The move looked to be part of a coordinated effort to silence President Vladimir Putin's most vocal critics months before legislative elections.
One of Navalny's lawyers, Yevgeny Smirnov, said at the late-night session that the prosecutors' move was meant to prevent Navalny's colleagues from running for public office.
“This issue has been tied to the law that prohibits anyone associated with the Foundation for Fighting Corruption from running for office,” Smirnov added.
Navalny, Putin's most powerful opponent, was jailed in January after returning from Germany, where he spent five months healing from a nerve agent poisoning, he blames on the Kremlin - an assertion that Russian officials deny.
In the Year 2014 in the Yves Rocher fraud case, he is serving time in jail for breaking the terms of his suspended sentence. Although the judgement was affirmed, the first sentence of 3.5 years in jail was reduced to 2.5 years by a Moscow city court.
