Navalny's widow Yulia's account briefly suspended by social media platform X

Navalnaya opened the account Monday to announce that she would continue her husband’s work advocating for a free, peaceful and democratic Russia. But on Tuesday, the account and its activity suddenly disappeared.

Moscow: The social media platform X temporarily suspended on Tuesday an account created by Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, and then restored it with no explanation.

Navalnaya opened the account Monday to announce that she would continue her husband’s work advocating for a free, peaceful and democratic Russia in the wake of her husband’s death in a remote Arctic prison. More than 90,000 users followed the account in its first 24 hours.

But on Tuesday, the account and its activity suddenly disappeared, replaced by the words “Account suspended” and a note that X — the social media company formerly known as Twitter — “suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.”

“Twitter has imposed restrictions on my account, which I opened yesterday,” Navalnaya wrote on the social network Telegram.

“According to the Shadowban Test service, my tweets are not shown in searches, and if you enter my name in the search bar, my page is not recommended among recommendations,” she wrote. “In addition, users noticed that if I open replies to messages, my original tweets are not displayed.”

Navalnaya said she had not received any information from representatives of the social network on the reason for the suspension.

The account was reinstated later Tuesday afternoon without explanation, and soon began adding tens of thousands of new followers. Neither X’s press office nor policy officers immediately responded to requests for comment about the suspension.

The suspension came shortly after Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, posted a video on YouTube addressed to Russian President Vladimir Putin in which she demanded the release of her son’s body.

“I ask you, Vladimir Putin, let me finally see my son,” Navalnaya, 69, said while standing in front of the Arctic penal colony where Navalny was pronounced dead Friday.

“For a fifth day now, I have not been able to see him, they do not release his body to me, they do not even tell me where it is,” she said. “I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane way.”

Behind her, a fence topped with a coil of concertina wire marked the perimeter of the prison. The video also appears on Yulia Navalnaya’s restored X account.

On Monday, a spokesperson for Navalny’s organization said investigators told Navalnaya that Navalny’s body would not be released for at least two more weeks.

On Tuesday, the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs announced it had placed Navalny’s brother Oleg on a wanted list. Russia’s state-owned news agency TASS, citing law enforcement agencies, said that a new criminal case has been opened against Oleg Navalny, without specifying which law or laws he has been accused of violating. However, the independent outlet Mediazona wrote on X that Oleg Navalny has been in the wanted database since 2022.

Oleg Navalny was sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison in 2014 on charges of fraud. Kremlin critics have long said the charges against him were manufactured with the intention of silencing his brother.

Oleg Navalny is believed to be living in exile outside Russia.