X says Yulia Navalnaya’s account was suspended due to ‘error’ – live | Ukraine

The safety account for the social media platform X has said that Yulia Navalnaya’s account was suspended earlier today after its “platform’s defence mechanism against manipulation and spam” mistakenly flagged it as being in violation of its rules.

“We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error,” it said.

X on Tuesday briefly blocked Navalnaya’s account, just one day after she created it after the death of her husband, Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

The @Yulia-Navalnaya account page was accessible again, about 50 minutes after it was suspended without explanation.

Navalnaya, 47, has accused the Russian authorities of murdering her husband, hiding his body and waiting for traces of the nerve agent novichok to disappear from it.

Estonia’s prime minister, Kaja Kallas, said her country has broken up a hybrid operation by Russia’s security services.

The Internal Security Services (ISS) and the prosecutor’s office said they had arrested 10 people they believed were acting for Russia in connection with attacks on ministers and a journalist’s cars.

“We know the Kremlin is targeting all of our democratic societies,” Kallas said in a post on social media X.

The ISS director general Margo Pollson said the aim of the hybrid operation was to sow fear and tension and undermine civil society.

“There was a plan to attack specific individuals’ vehicles yet, which we foiled. This is a new method of influence. In our assessment, Russia did not achieve its objective,” she said.

Some of those detained were recruited in Russia, others were recruited through social media with a fee that “was not significant and certainly not worth the risk”.

The foreign ministry will summon Russia’s top diplomat in Estonia.

“It is a clear example of Russia trying to weaken and undermine the unity of the west. Estonia takes the situation very seriously and we are doing our utmost to stop any action against our state,” Estonia’s foreign minister, Margus Tsahkna, said on Tuesday.

Last week, Moscow put Kallas, who has been leading efforts to increase military assistance to Kyiv and tighten sanctions against Russia, and other Baltic states officials on a wanted list.

Russia said the Estonian state secretary, Taimar Peterkop, the Lithuanian culture minister, Simonas Kairys, and Kallas were accused of “destroying monuments to Soviet soldiers”.

X has restored access to Yulia Navalnaya’s account. There still appears no explanation for the temporary suspension. The top post on her account is the video of Alexei Navalny’s mother demanding the return of her son’s body.

France has called for an “independent” probe into the death of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after summoning Moscow’s envoy.

“France holds the Russian authorities fully responsible for the death of Alexei Navalny,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

France “calls for an independent and in-depth investigation,” the ministry said, adding that Russia’s ambassador had been summoned on Monday. Germany also summoned Russia’s ambassador in Berlin on Monday over Navalny’s death.

“France calls for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners in Russia and expresses in particular its deep concern over the critical state of health of opponent Vladimir Kara-Murza,” the statement added.

On Friday, France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, accused Moscow authorities of condemning “free spirits” to death.

Navalny, 47, died in his Arctic prison colony on Friday, Russian authorities said. The opposition politician’s team says he was murdered.

• Lyudmila Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s mother, has demanded that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, hand over her son’s body. “Vladimir Putin … let me finally see my son,” Navalnaya said in a video message. The social media network X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to have later suspended the account of Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who has accused the Russian authorities of murdering her husband, hiding his body and waiting for traces of the nerve agent novichok to disappear from it. There was no reason given for the suspension.

• Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, has described Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country as an “existential war” during a visit to Tokyo. “So we can’t speak about fatigue, because it’s an existential war – you can’t be fatigued when you’re fighting for your future, for your life … for global security order,” he said.

• A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s Sumy region hit a residential building on Tuesday, killing five people, authorities said.

• Protests from Polish farmers on Tuesday marked an escalation from previous demonstrations, with a near-total blockade of all Ukrainian border crossings and disruption at ports and on roads nationwide.

• A Russian court has rejected a complaint by Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich about the extension of his pre-trial detention until 30 March on spying charges, which he denies, the court’s press service said.

• Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said that a Russian pilot who defected to Ukraine and was found shot dead in Spain last week was a “moral corpse” when he planned his defection, Russian news agencies reported.

• Russia’s FSB security services said it had arrested a US-Russian woman suspected of treason for raising funds for the Ukrainian army. The FSB in the central Urals city of Ekaterinburg said it had “suppressed the illegal activities” of a 33-year-old woman, a resident of Los Angeles with dual citizenship, and taken her into custody.

• Sweden will donate military aid to Ukraine worth about 7.1 billion Swedish crowns (£541m), the country’s largest contribution to date, the country’s defence ministry said. It will be Sweden’s 15th round of aid for Ukraine, taking the overall aid since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 to about 30 billion crowns (£2.3bn).

The social media network X, formerly known as Twitter, appears to have suspended the account of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader who died in highly suspicious circumstances in an Arctic Circle jail on Friday.

“Account suspended,” a notice says on her account. It was not immediately clear why.

Navalnaya, 47, has accused the Russian authorities of murdering her husband, hiding his body and waiting for traces of the nerve agent novichok to disappear from it.

The Kremlin said on Monday it had “nothing to add” to the news on the death of Navalny. It denies involvement in his death.

Miranda Bryant

The Swedish prime minister, Ulf Kristersson, is to visit Budapest this week to meet Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán – days before Hungary’s parliament is expected to finally vote on Sweden’s Nato membership.

Kristersson’s office made the announcement of the visit – due to take place on Friday – amid reports that Hungary’s parliament will vote on the issue on Monday.

It comes after Orbán invited his Swedish counterpart to negotiations on the question soon after Turkey approved the Nordic country’s Nato membership – leaving Hungary the last remaining member of the alliance to give Sweden the green light.

At the time, Tobias Billström, Sweden’s foreign minister, said they would have to “think through what the letter signals” before responding.

The Swedish government said the agenda for Friday’s meeting between the two leaders would include security and defence policy cooperation, preparation for Hungary’s upcoming EU presidency and the EU’s strategic agenda.

Afterwards Kristersson and Orbán will hold a joint press conference.

Lyudmila Navalnaya, Alexei Navalny’s mother, has demanded that Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, hand over her son’s body.

“For the fifth day, I have been unable to see him. They wouldn’t release his body to me. And they’re not even telling me where he is,” Navalnaya said in the video.

“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,” she said.

Navalnaya and her son’s lawyer travelled over the weekend to the notorious “Polar Wolf” IK-3 penal colony in Russia’s Arctic north, where Navalny had been held since last year, to track down his body, but received contradicting information from various institutions over its location and left without recovering or seeing her son.

Navalny, 47, died in jail on 16 February at 2.17pm local time, said his official spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, citing a message from Navalny’s mother and challenging Russia’s official explanation that Navalny died after a fall at the Arctic penal colony where he was being held.

The Russian opposition leader had been serving a decades-long prison term on various charges, the latest of which was a 19-year sentence on six counts.

He had been behind bars since returning from Germany in January 2021 for charges that he rejected as politically motivated.

Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmygal, has described Russia’s full-scale invasion of his country as an “existential war” during a visit to Tokyo.

“I believe the United States will support Ukraine also, like the European Union, like Japan, like all the G7 countries and the IMF and all international financial organisations,” Shmygal told a press conference when asked about “Ukraine fatigue” in the international community.

“So we can’t speak about fatigue, because it’s an existential war – you can’t be fatigued when you’re fighting for your future, for your life … for global security order,” he said.

The capture of the eastern Ukrainian city of Avdiivka on Monday gives Russia full control of the area surrounding Donetsk, a large Ukrainian city that was seized by Russian proxy forces in 2014, and comes as the second anniversary of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine nears.

The Ukrainian army had struggled on the frontline around Avdiivka in recent months during one of the most intense battles of the war, which left the city almost destroyed and caused nearly all of the more than 30,000 prewar population to leave.

The US president, Joe Biden, had warned that the city might fall to Russia due to weapons shortages exacerbated by months of Republican congressional opposition to a new US funding package for the Ukrainian military.

A Russian drone attack on Ukraine’s northerly Sumy region hit a residential building on Tuesday, killing five people, authorities said.

“ … a family was killed: a mother and two sons, as well as two distant relatives,” the regional military administration wrote on Telegram, citing updated data.

Ukraine’s military had said earlier that Russia had launched 23 drones overnight and its air defences had destroyed all of them.

The Ukrainian military has said it is critically short of ammunition and shells, worsened by the holdup of a $60bn US aid package.

Last week, Nato’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, said the US failure to vote through a fresh military aid package for Ukraine is already having an impact on the battlefield.

“The fact that the US has not been able to make a decision so far has already had consequences. It is impacting the flow of support,” the Nato chief told reporters in Brussels on Thursday.