Russian Alpinist Katya Lipka, who recently scaled the Mount Everest, unfurled Ukraine’s national flag on the world’s highest peak. A video has surfaced, which shows the climber also calling for the release of prominent Russian opposition figure and anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, who was sent to prison in February 2021.
According to a Storyful report, Lipka reached the Mount Everest summit on May 24. She scaled the Everest with fellow Alpinist Ashok Lama.
The video shot by Lama shows Lipka atop the Everest with a Ukraine flag and a banner that reads “Free Navalny”.
See the video here:
Lama had shared an Instagram post on May 28, saying he climbed Mount Everest on May 24.
Taking to Instagram on June 2, Lipka had shared that she “wished so much that the war would end… and that people would stop being killed”. She climbed the Everest earlier also.
In yet another post, Lipka shared an image of her holding the ‘Free Navalny’ banner atop the mountain. In the accompanying caption, she wished the jailed leader on his birthday, which was on June 4.
Navalny was sent to jail in February 2021 for two and a half years for parole violations. In August 2020, the Kremlin critic was apparently poisoned with a nerve agent in Russia, and was evacuated to Germany. He was arrested on his return to Russia after recovering from the poisoning.
He has now allegedly been transferred to an unknown location from his prison colony, a Reuters report said Tuesday.
“Where Alexei is now, and which colony he is being taken to, we don’t know,” Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief of staff, was quoted as saying in a statement shared on the Telegram app.