X suspends account of Alexei Navalny's widow Yulia Navalnaya 'for violating rules'... before reinstating it 45 minutes later - a day after she set it up and accused Putin of killing her husband

• Yulia Navalnaya set up her account on January 19 and posted two videos on it

Elon Musk’s X platform (formerly Twitter) suspended the account of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, it appeared today.

‘Account suspended,’ a notice said on her account this morning, with a note underneath saying ‘X suspends accounts which violate the X Rules.’

In the aftermath of the suspension it was not immediately clear what rules had been broken and it was reinstated 45 minutes later.

X later explained that the platform’s defence mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged the account as violating the rules. The company said her account was recovered ‘as soon as we became aware of the error’.

Yulia’s account on the social media platform was set up on February 19 so that she could post a video of her speaking to camera following her husband’s death.

In the video, she accused Russian president Vladimir Putin of killing Alexei.

Alexei Navalny, 47, fell unconscious and died suddenly on Friday after a walk at the ‘Polar Wolf’ penal colony above the Arctic Circle where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said.

The X (formerly Twitter ) account of Yulia Navalnaya, the widow of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny , appeared to be suspended on Tuesday

Her account on the social media platform, owned by Elon Musk, was set up on February 19 in order to share a video of her speaking to camera

Lyudmila Navalnya (pictured) has been fighting to get her son’s body back from prison authorities

The West and Navalny’s supporters say Putin is responsible for Navalny’s death.

The Kremlin has denied involvement and said that Western claims that Putin was responsible were unacceptable.

Putin himself has made no public comment on Navalny’s death but it has further deepened a gaping schism in relations between Moscow and the West caused by the nearly two-year Ukraine war.

Navalnaya set up her account yesterday and gained more than 90,000 followers within just 24 hours.

After posting the video of herself speaking to the camera, she wrote: ‘I don’t care how the killer’s press secretary comments on my words. Give back Alexei’s body and let him be buried with dignity, don’t stop people from saying goodbye to him.’

Before the account was suspended, X users already reported that they had trouble quoting or replying to Navalnaya’s tweets, according to media outlet Meduza.

Taking to its own platform to explain the suspension, X’s ‘Safety’ account wrote: ‘Our platform’s defense mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules.

‘We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defense.’

The suspension came shortly after Navalnaya had posted a video of her husband’s mother, who called on Putin to release her son’s body ‘immediately’, after authorities told her she wouldn’t be able to see it for at least 14 days.

Lyudmila, who has been fighting to get her son’s body back, said in a video statement five days after her son’s death: ‘I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, the solution to the issue depends only on you. Let me finally see my son.

‘I demand that Alexei’s body be released immediately so that I can bury him in a humane way.’

The video was posted this morning and Navalnaya’s account was suspended for 45 minutes before being reinstated around 1.30pm.

Navalnaya’s account suspension came days after Putin praised X-owner Elon Musk during his interview with Tucker Carlson.

Vladimir Putin said there is ‘no stopping’ Elon Musk in an interview with Tucker Carlson released on Wednesday

Musk indicated that he was tuning in for the historic interview by sharing a clip on X saying he was ‘watching it now’, but did not directly respond to being name-checked by Putin

Vladimir Putin praised tech mogul Elon Musk (pictured) in an interview with Tucker Carlson

In the interview, Putin was asked by Carlson about whether an ‘AI empire’ is on the horizon, pivoting the conversation to Musk whose Neuralink company has reportedly implanted a microchip into a human brain.

‘I think there’s no stopping Elon Musk. He will do as he sees fit,’ Putin told Carlson.

‘Nevertheless, you’ll need to find some common ground with him. Search for ways to persuade him. I think he’s a smart person. I truly believe he is.

‘So you’ll need to reach an agreement with him because this process needs to be formalised and subjected to certain rules.’

Musk indicated that he was tuning in for the historic interview by sharing a clip on X saying he was ‘watching it now’, but did not directly respond to being name-checked by Putin.

For what reasons are X accounts suspended? 

Guidance on their website states the following reasons for the suspencion of an account:

Spam: Most of the accounts we suspend are suspended because they are spammy, or just plain fake, and they introduce security risks for X and for everyone using X. These types of accounts are against our X Rules. Sometimes a real person’s account gets suspended by mistake, and in those cases we’ll work with the person to make sure the account is unsuspended.

Account security at risk: If we suspect an account has been hacked or compromised, we may suspend it until it can be secured and restored to the account owner in order to reduce potentially malicious activity caused by the compromise.

Abusive posts or behavior: We may suspend an account if it has been reported to us as violating our X Rules surrounding abuse. When an account engages in abusive behavior, like sending threats to others or impersonating other accounts, we may suspend it temporarily or, in some cases, permanently.

Source: X

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