The press secretary of Alexei Navalny left Russia

Earlier in August, a Russian court issued a restraining order on Kira Yarmesh for violating coronavirus rules when she participated in a demonstration last winter.

Among other things, she was not allowed to go out in the evenings and participate in demonstrations. According to Yermisch himself, the ruling was politically motivated, as Reuters writes.

But she has now left Russia. According to two sources to the Interfax news agency, Jarmis is in Finland, but she does not want to confirm this, Reuters writes.

The lawyer has left

Kira Yarmysh has long been the spokesman for Putin’s critic Alexei Navalny, who is imprisoned for violating a travel ban when he was treated for poisoning in Germany.

It is also said that Navalny’s lawyer Lyubov Sobol left Russia earlier this summer. Earlier this year, Alexei Navalny’s organization was designated as an extremist organization, and its membership or support was criminalized.

serving a prison sentence

Many experts see the law as a way for Putin to silence the opposition ahead of parliamentary elections this fall.

“The law is part of a larger campaign against people who oppose the government,” Tatiana Stanovaga, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center think tank, told CNN earlier this summer.

Alexei Navalny himself may face a longer prison sentence because his organization has been labeled extremist. The opposition politician considers this strange because it constitutes retroactive punishment.