The News
Russian law enforcement officers detained Alexei Navalny’s lawyer, Vasily Dubkov, who had accompanied the opposition leader’s mother to Russia’s Far North to try to persuade authorities to hand over her son’s body, Russian independent media reported.
Dubkov was later released from the police department, he told the Russian independent outlet Verstka. He did not tell the outlet why he had been detained, but said that it was an obstruction of his legal practice. Novaya Gazeta reported that the lawyer was detained on charges of disorderly conduct. The outlets did not specify when he was detained or for how long.
Dubkov is not the first of Navalny’s lawyers to face a run-in with the law. Three of Navalny’s lawyers were detained in 2023 on accusations of abetting an “extremist” organization, the classification given to Navalny’s groups since 2021.
Two other lawyers who worked with Navalny have fled Russia, and are currently on Russia’s wanted list, Russian media reported earlier this month.