Kira Yarmysh, the spokeswoman of jailed anti-corruption activist and opposition politician Alexei Navalny, has fled Russia, the last of his senior team to go into self-imposed exile, newswires reported on August 30.

Yarmysh has been a high-profile member of Navalny’s team and was accompanying him on the fateful flight from Siberia to Moscow last August when he was poisoned with the military grade nerve agent Novichok and collapse. Yarmysh was front and centre in the following days as the incident became front page news and she and Navalny’s wife Yulia battled with the Kremlin to get Navalny medivaced to Germany, where he made an eventual recovery.  

Navalny’s decision to return to Russia this January, where he was immediately arrested, has provoked the harshest crackdown on the opposition in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s two decades in office.

Navalny’s anti-corruption organisation has been labelled “extremist” and outlawed. Just turning up for a demonstration organised by Team Navalny now can carry long prison sentences, effectively destroying the organisation that had intended to organise “smart voting” in the upcoming general election to try to unseat the ruling Untied Russia Party.  

Due to the possibility of arrest and imprisonment most of Navalny senior associates have chosen to flee into exile. Interfax cited two unnamed sources as saying Yarmysh had fled Russia, with one source specifying that she went to Helsinki, Finland.  

Neither Yarmysh nor other members of Navalny's team have confirmed or denied the reports, cites the Moscow Times.

Yarmysh has already faced the ire of the authorities and was sentenced in August to 18 months of “restricted freedom,” a parole-like penalty, for breaking anti-coronavirus restrictions earlier this year in calling for protests opposing Navalny’s arrest. She seems to have skipped the country just before her sentence comes into effect. Previously Yarmysh  was sentenced to house arrest following the mass pro-Navalny street demonstrations on January 23 and January 31.  

Navalny's ally and also one of the highest-profile figures in the opposition movement Lyubov Sobol also left Russia earlier this summer after receiving a similar “restricted freedom” sentence in the same case.  

After the authorities labelled Navalny's anti-corruption organisation extremist, the leaders of Team Navalny decided to close the organisation down in April in a move to protect the workers and volunteers.

Exiled Navalny allies Ruslan Shavvedinov and Leonid Volkov have been heading the group’s political and media operations from Vilnius, Lithuania.  

The current crackdown is the most extensive and aggressive of Putin’s career. In recent months a dozen independent media organisations and NGOs have been harassed, labelled “foreign agents” or simply forced to close.  

On August 27, 2021, newsrooms across Russia appealed in unison to the country’s leadership, demanding an end to the authorities’ campaign against independent journalism. The leading independent titles – many of which cannot even be classed as “opposition” but are simply objectively reporting on Russia’s problems – including Dozhd, Novaya Gazeta, Forbes Russia, The Village, Republic, Wonderzine and many more published letters calling for “a return to sanity.

The Baltics-based Meduza added its own appeal that was published on August 30, which is reposted here in full:

“This text is addressed to the following public officials: President Vladimir Putin, National Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev, National Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, Federal Security Service Director Alexander Bortnikov, Attorney General Igor Krasnov, Investigative Committee Chairman Alexander Bastrykin, Justice Minister Konstantin Chuychenko, Interior Affairs Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, National Guard Federal Service Director Viktor Zolotov, Federal Supervision of Communications, Information Technology, and Mass Media Service Director Andrey Lipov, State Duma Chairman Vyacheslav Volodin, Federation Council Chairwoman Valentina Matviyenko, and Constitutional Court Chairman Valery Zorkin.”

We, the journalists and editors of the Russian and Russian-language mass media, demand an immediate end to the state campaign against the free press. The designation of media outlets and individual citizens as “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations” directly violates Russia’s Constitution, its law on the mass media, the nation’s Criminal Code, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which guarantees freedom of the press. These statuses lead either to a publication’s dissolution or to such discriminatory conditions that journalists cannot actually perform the functions of their profession.

We call on Russia’s authorities to review the felony and administrative cases against journalists and to investigate incidents where reporters were beaten or unlawfully harassed. We demand the public release of all information about who launched the concerted campaign against Russia’s free press, when it began, and why it’s happening at all. In particular, we want to understand the role in this campaign played by Russia’s National Security Council, which our sources say is the key driving force.

We are confident that these events are part of a concerted campaign to destroy Russia’s independent media, whose only “sin” is reporting the news honestly to the public. We demand an immediate end to this campaign. We demand to know the names of the people involved in this campaign. And we demand the repeal of Russia’s anti-constitutional, anti-democratic laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable organisations.”  

In addition, we draw your attention to the fact that this campaign features not just unprecedented pressure on newsrooms but on journalists personally. At demonstrations, reporters are beaten and treated unlawfully and shamelessly like protesters themselves. Former Kommersant correspondent Ivan Safronov is being jailed on charges of treason. He was taken into custody well more than a year ago, on July 7, 2020, but officials have still presented no evidence of his guilt. Ivan Safronov should be freed immediately and exonerated fully.  

The work journalists do is protected by the law, and officials involved in the persecution of journalists should be punished. We call for a thorough investigation of all incidents where physical force or special police equipment was used against reporters by members of the Interior Ministry and the National Guard, including violence against Meduza correspondent Kristina Safonova and Novaya Gazeta correspondent and photographer Elizaveta Kirpanova and Georgy Markov at protests on January 23, 2021, and Real View YouTube channel anchor Fyodor Khudorkomov at a demonstration on February 2, and Mediazona journalist David Frenkel at a polling station on July 3, 2020. Some of these reporters even sustained head injuries when they were assaulted.  

All unlawful prosecutions of journalists for supposedly participating in unpermitted protests also demand the same thorough investigation. This includes cases against Baza editor-in-chief Nikita Mogutin (who was fined for covering Russia’s opposition protests on April 23) and Mediazona editor-in-chief Sergey Smirnov (who was jailed for 15 days based on bogus charges that he incited an unpermitted rally).  

Once again, these are our demands:

Repeal Russia’s laws on “foreign agents” and “undesirable” organisations;

Un-designate all organisations and individuals added to these registries, and abolish the lists themselves; and

Drop all unlawful misdemeanour and felony cases against journalists and launch an immediate inquiry.

We demand compliance with the Constitution, its law on the mass media, and Article 144 of Russia’s Criminal Code, which prohibits the “obstruction of the lawful professional activity of journalists.”