Yulia Navalnaya’s account on X was temporarily suspended on Tuesday, one day after she uploaded a video message accusing Russian president Vladimir Putin of killing her husband, opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Navalnaya’s social media account had the notice “Account suspended”, initially with no explanation given from X. Shortly after, her account was restored. X published a statement on its official safety account, explaining that her account was blocked “mistakenly” caused by a system “error”.
“Our platform’s defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules,” the statement read.
“We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense.”
Navalnaya only created her account on Monday, and has already amassed over 256.7K followers since. According to Politico, X had restricted the account’s visibility, and some of her tweets were even hidden from search outcomes.
In a video message released on Monday, Navalnaya accused Putin of killing her husband, adding that she believed the Kremlin was hiding his body in order for any traces of the nerve agent novichok to disappear from it.
“[By] killing Alexei, [Putin had] killed half of me, half of my heart and my soul,” she said. “But I still have the other half, and it tells me that I have no right to give up.”
On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed Navalnaya’s accusations, calling them “unfounded and vulgar.”
Navalnaya immediately responded to Peskov’s remarks on X, saying: “I do not give a damn how the press secretary of a murderer comments on my words.”
“Give back Alexei’s body and let him be buried with dignity, don’t get in the way of people saying goodbye to him.”
Overnight, Alexei Navalny’s mother has pleaded to President Vladimir Putin to hand over her son’s body to allow her to bury him with dignity.
Lyudmila Navalnaya was filmed standing outside the remote “Polar Wolf” IK-3 penal colony in the country’s Arctic north, where he died, appealing to Putin to release her son’s body, which she has been waiting for since the weekend.
“For the fifth day, I have been unable to see him,” she said. “They wouldn’t release his body to me. And they’re not even telling me where he is.”
“I’m reaching out to you, Vladimir Putin. The resolution of this matter depends solely on you. Let me finally see my son. I demand that Alexei’s body is released immediately, so that I can bury him like a human being.”