MOSCOW: Jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny said on Monday that a prison commission had designated him an extremist and a terrorist, but officially no longer regarded him as a flight risk.
Navalny said on Instagram that he had been summoned before a commission which voted unanimously in favor of the change of status.
The designation marks a further escalation of official pressure against President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent domestic critic, currently serving two-and-a-half years in prison for parole violations he says were trumped up to thwart his political ambitions.
Navalny made light of the announcement, saying that he welcomed the fact he was no longer designated as prone to escape and so would be subjected to less frequent and stringent night time checks by guards.
“It’s just that there is now a sign over my bunk that I am a terrorist,” said Navalny in the post, which was published with the help of his lawyers.
There was no immediate confirmation from Russian authorities of the change in Navalny’s status, and the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN) did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Navalny, 45, was jailed after returning to Russia at the start of this year from Germany, where he underwent months of treatment to recover from being poisoned with a rare nerve agent in Siberia in August 2020.
The Kremlin denied any involvement in poisoning him and has repeatedly said that his treatment is a matter for the prison service. Putin takes pains to avoid even mentioning his name.
Navalny’s movement suffered a new blow in June when a court ruled its activities to be extremist. Many of his allies have had their homes raided or their freedom of movement restricted, and some have fled abroad. Last month Russia opened a new criminal case against Navalny that could keep him in jail for a further decade.
Some of his supporters have criticized last week’s award of the Nobel Peace Prize to Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov, saying Navalny would have been a more deserving recipient.
Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says his prison has designated him a terrorist
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Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny says his prison has designated him a terrorist
- No immediate confirmation from Russian authorities of the change in Navalny’s status
NATO wants ‘automated’ defenses along borders with Russia: German general
- That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone,” said Lowin
- The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said
FRANKFURT: NATO is moving to boost its defenses along European borders with Russia by creating an AI-assisted “automated zone” not reliant on human ground forces, a German general said in comments published Saturday.
That zone would act as a defensive buffer before any enemy forces advanced into “a sort of hot zone” where traditional combat could happen, said General Thomas Lowin, NATO’s deputy chief of staff for operations.
He was speaking to the German Sunday newspaper Welt am Sonntag.
The automated area would have sensors to detect enemy forces and activate defenses such as drones, semi-autonomous combat vehicles, land-based robots, as well as automatic air defenses and anti-missile systems, Lowin said.
He added, however, that any decision to use lethal weapons would “always be under human responsibility.”
The sensors — located “on the ground, in space, in cyberspace and in the air” — would cover an area of several thousand kilometers (miles) and detect enemy movements or deployment of weapons, and inform “all NATO countries in real time,” he said.
The AI-guided system would reinforce existing NATO weapons and deployed forces, the general said.
The German newspaper reported that there were test programs in Poland and Romania trying out the proposed capabilities, and all of NATO should be working to make the system operational by the end of 2027.
NATO’s European members are stepping up preparedness out of concern that Russia — whose economy is on a war footing because of its conflict in Ukraine — could seek to further expand, into EU territory.
Poland is about to sign a contract for “the biggest anti-drone system in Europe,” its defense minister, Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz, told the Gazeta Wyborcza daily.
Kosiniak-Kamysz did not say how much the deal, involving “different types of weaponry,” would cost, nor which consortium would ink the contract at the end of January.
He said it was being made to respond to “an urgent operational demand.”
