Social media platform X on Tuesday temporarily suspended an account created by Yulia Navalnaya, widow of Aleksei A. Navalny, and then reinstated it, saying it had been flagged in error by its automated security protocols.
Ms Navalnaya opened the account on Monday to announce that she would continue her husband’s work 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 the first 24 hours.
But on Tuesday, Account and her activity suddenly disappeared, replaced by the words “Account suspended” and a note that X – the social media company formerly known as Twitter – “suspends accounts that violate X Rules.”
“Our platform’s anti-manipulation and anti-spam defense mechanism mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules,” X’s security team wrote on the platform later Tuesday. “We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error and will update the defense.”
Earlier in the day, Ms Navalnaya wrote on the Telegram social network that “Twitter has imposed restrictions on my account, which I opened yesterday”.
“According to the Shadowban Test service, my tweets do not appear in searches, and if you enter my name in the search bar, my page is not recommended among the recommendations,” he wrote.
After the account was restored, tens of thousands of new followers were added.
The brief suspension came shortly after Mr. Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila Navalnaya, posted a YouTube video addressed to President Vladimir V. Putin in which she called for the release of her son’s body.
“I’m asking you, Vladimir Putin, let me finally see my son,” Ms Navalny, 69, said as she stood outside the Arctic penal colony where Mr Navalny was pronounced dead on Friday.
“Even on the fifth day I can’t see him, they don’t let me have his body, they don’t even tell me where he is,” he said. “I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane manner.”
Behind her, a fence 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 spokesman for Navalny’s organization said investigators had told Ms Navalnaya that Mr Navalny’s body would not be released for at least another two weeks.
On Tuesday, the Russian Interior Ministry announced that it had placed Mr Navalny’s brother Oleg on a wanted list. Russian state news agency TASS, citing law enforcement agencies, reported that a new criminal case had been opened against Oleg Navalny, without specifying which law or laws he was accused of violating. However, the independent outlet Mediazona wrote to X that Oleg Navalny is in the database wanted from 2022.
Oleg Navalny was sentenced to three and a half years in prison in 2014 on fraud charges. Kremlin critics have long said the charges against him were fabricated to silence his brother.
Oleg Navalny is believed to be living in exile outside of Russia.
