Russia seeks to label Navalny's ACF a 'terrorist organisation'
The Russian prosecutor general’s office has asked the Supreme Court to declare the Anti-Corruption Foundation (ACF), the successor group to the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, a “terrorist organisation.”
The move intensifies pressure on anti-corruption activists; a hearing will be held behind closed doors on 27 November.
The Supreme Court’s press service confirmed it had accepted the request concerning the “US non-profit corporation Anti-Corruption Foundation Inc.” The “terrorist organisation” classification is the most severe legal measure taken against Navalny’s political and civic legacy.
This legal move follows the international ACF’s launch in July 2022. That followed a Russian court’s 2021 decision to declare Navalny’s original Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) an “extremist organisation,” permanently banning all its activities in the Russian Federation.
The ACF Supervisory Board includes internationally recognized figures including MEP Guy Verhofstadt, Pulitzer Prize winner Anne Applebaum, philosopher Francis Fukuyama, and Yulia Navalnaya, the opposition leader’s widow. However, the ACF had already been added to Russia’s “foreign agents” list in December 2022, a first step towards isolation.
The new legal action unfolds as Moscow authorities continue to deny any involvement in the death of Alexei Navalny. The opposition leader, who survived a poisoning attempt in 2020, returned to Russia in January 2021 and was immediately imprisoned.
In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a special regime penal colony for “extremism.” On 16 February 2024, the opposition leader died aged 47 in the IK-3 'Polar Wolf' penal colony in the Arctic Circle. The Federal Penitentiary Service announced the death occurred after he lost consciousness while taking a walk, and that resuscitation efforts were unsuccessful.
His widow, Yulia Navalnaya, publicly claimed in September 2024 that her husband was poisoned in prison. She declared the conclusion was confirmed by two independent laboratories. Before that, the Investigative Committee’s refusal to open a criminal case (made public by Ms Navalnaya in August 2024) had indicated the cause of death was heart problems from a “complex illness.”
Russian authorities have consistently and firmly denied both the accusations regarding involvement in the 2020 poisoning and those related to the death in 2024.
Translation by Iurie Tataru
