MOSCOW – Mrs Yulia Navalnaya’s account on billionaire Elon Musk’s X social-media service was briefly suspended, a day after it was used to help her challenge Russian President Vladimir Putin over the death of her husband.

The widow of opposition leader Alexei Navalny accused Mr Putin of killing her husband in a video posted on her X account on Feb 19.

That came as she announced she was taking over Mr Navalny’s role as opposition leader after his death in a remote Russian prison colony on Feb 16.

Her profile page showed an “Account suspended” message on Feb 20 and an explanation that the service “suspends accounts which violate the X Rules”.

Shortly after, the account appeared online again.

X said Mrs Navalnaya’s account was briefly suspended due to an error caused by a system to prevent manipulation and spam.

“Our platform’s defence mechanism against manipulation and spam mistakenly flagged @yulia_navalnaya as violating our rules,” the company said in a statement.

“We unsuspended the account as soon as we became aware of the error, and will be updating the defence,” it added.

Mrs Navalnaya opened the account on Feb 19. It has so far attracted more than 150,000 followers, and a video statement she posted on it has been viewed nearly 5 million times.

Meanwhile, Mr Navalny’s mother, Lyudmila, appealed to Mr Putin to order the release of her son’s body, which the authorities have kept hidden since his death at the Arctic IK-3 prison colony on Feb 16.

“I have not been able to see him for five days. They have not given his body to me and haven’t even told me where he is,” she said in an online video statement posted on Feb 20 and recorded in front of the prison colony.

“I appeal to you, Vladimir Putin, because the solution to this problem 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.” BLOOMBERG