Russia's Interior Ministry on February 20 again added self-exiled Oleg Navalny, a younger brother of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who died in Russian prison last week, to it "wanted list" on unspecified charges.
The last time the ministry added Oleg Navalny to its wanted list was in January 2022 after penitentiary service officials demanded a one-year suspended prison term handed to Oleg Navalny in 2021 on a charge of violating COVID-19 prevention regulations be turned into a real prison term.
SEE ALSO: In Video Message, Navalny's Mother Pleads With Putin To Return Her Son's BodyIn February 2022, a Moscow court approved the penitentiary service officials' demand, but Oleg Navalny had fled Russia by that time. That request was canceled later, most likely because time ran out under the statute of limitations.
Oleg Navalny's current whereabouts are unknown. He was given the one-year suspended prison sentence after a court in Moscow in August 2021 found him guilty of publicly calling for the violation of coronavirus pandemic restrictions.
He and his supporters called the sentence politically motivated.
In 2014, Oleg and Aleksei Navalny were convicted of stealing about $500,000 from two Russian firms, one of which was affiliated with the French cosmetics company Yves Rocher, and of laundering some of the money.
Both were sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison, but Aleksei's sentence was suspended at the time. The brothers denied the charges, saying the case was politically motivated -- in part as an effort to turn Oleg Navalny into a "hostage" who could be used to blackmail his brother into refraining from his political and anti-corruption activism.
In late June 2018, Oleg Navalny was released from prison after serving a 3 1/2-year prison term.
His eldest brother, an outspoken critic of President Vladimir Putin and his government, died last week in a notorious Polar Wolf prison in the remote Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region in the Arctic, where he was transferred in December after a court extended his prison term to 19 years on extremism charges which Aleksei Navalny and his associates rejected, calling them politically motivated.