Among the ex-heads of headquarters, 21% have emigrated, 29% are under investigation, 40% are engaged in their own projects and policies
Emigration, arrests and fines
Three months have passed since the entry of Navalny’s Headquarters (their activities are prohibited on the territory of Russia) into the list of extremist organizations. The head of the network of headquarters, Leonid Volkov, disbanding them, said at the end of April that they were released “for free swimming”. RBC found out what happened since the dissolution.
By the time the website of Navalny’s headquarters was blocked, their number in the country reached 37. RBC spoke with 16 ex-coordinators, information about the remaining ones was collected from open sources, media publications, court cards, social networks. Judging by the data studied, two of the 37 in 2020 & ndash;2021 were not brought to administrative responsibility, 11 are under investigation.
The total term of administrative arrests that the ex-heads of the headquarters served for 2020 & ndash;2021 is 457 days. The longest administrative arrest— 102 days in 2021— was at the Kurgan coordinator Alexey Shvarts. (“I even sat out Navalny,” he told RBC.)
The total amount of fines issued is 4,158 million rubles, most of them are for claims for damages after the January rallies in support of Navalny. The former head of the staff in Krasnodar, Anastasia Panchenko, was fined 50 thousand rubles. in the case of propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations. She posted a screenshot of “two persons, according to the external signs of the female sex,” who “carry out tactile touches with their lips to each other” on Instagram in storis (her lawyer reported this).
One of the coordinators, Andrey Borovikov from Arkhangelsk, was convicted in a case of distributing pornography due to the publication of a Rammstein clip, he is serving 2.5 years in a high-security colony.
Two & mdash; Moscow coordinator Oleg Stepanov and Alexey Vorsin from Khabarovsk & mdash; are under house arrest. The ex-head of the Murmansk headquarters, Violetta Grudina, who submitted documents for participation in the local City Council, was forcibly hospitalized in the Murmansk Regional Center for Specialized Types of Medical Care. She was placed there by a court decision for treatment for coronavirus, although the activist insists that she received negative tests for COVID-19. Eight more heads of headquarters emigrated to France, the USA, Germany and Turkey.
Three ex-heads of the headquarters spoke out against Alexey Navalny and the Anti-Corruption Fund (he was included in the list of foreign agents, recognized as an extremist organization and banned). So, the former head of the Saratov headquarters, Mikhail Murygin, said that it was almost impossible to work with Volkov. The former head of the staff in Nizhny Novgorod, Roman Tregubov, said in the winter of 2021 that he was resigning his powers, as he did not agree with the holding of uncoordinated rallies. He later denied his resignation, saying that the video was recorded under pressure.
Where the headquarters worked
The headquarters were in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Arkhangelsk, Barnaul, Belgorod, Vladivostok, Volgograd, Voronezh, Yekaterinburg, Izhevsk, Irkutsk, Kazan, Kaliningrad, Kemerovo, Krasnodar, Krasnoyarsk, Kurgan, Lipetsk, Murmansk, Nizhny Novgorod, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Penza, Perm, Pskov, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Saratov, Tambov, Tver, Tomsk, Tyumen, Ufa, Khabarovsk, Cheboksary, Chelyabinsk and Yaroslavl.
& laquo; Without the brand & laquo; Bulk»
15 ex-coordinators told RBC that they continue to engage in politics (two-Sergey Boyko from Novosibirsk and Ksenia Fadeeva from Tomsk-acting municipal deputies). Also, RBC referred to those who are engaged in politics as ex-coordinators who declared their desire to participate in regional or Duma elections in 2021, and those who intend to create new projects.
The former coordinator of the Moscow headquarters Oleg Stepanov and the Khabarovsk headquarters Alexey Vorsin spoke about their intentions to run for the State Duma. Later, Vorsin, who was under house arrest, refused to participate in the elections, and Stepanov could not open an election account, without which it is impossible to collect signatures.
Six ex-coordinators planned to be elected to regional parliaments or city dumas. On July 27, the nomination of Irina Fatyanova, already a registered candidate for the legislative Assembly, was canceled in St. Petersburg (she previously headed Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg), on July 7, the ex-head of the staff in Perm, Sergei Ukhov, who ran for the City Duma, was removed from the election. Dmitry Tsibirev was not registered as a candidate of the Saratov City Duma, the former head of the staff in Cheboksary, Semyon Kochkin, has a similar situation.
In all cases, the election commissions explained the refusals by the connection of candidates with recognized extremist “Navalny’s Headquarters”: in early June, Vladimir Putin signed a law banning those involved in extremist and terrorist organizations from being elected.
After the adoption of this law, some of the former heads of headquarters abandoned the idea of running for office and decided to engage in their own projects. Ex-coordinator in Izhevsk Ivan Eliseev told RBC about the creation of a socio-political movement “Udmurtia against corruption”, whose participants will issueinvestigate corruption on YouTube and monitor public procurement. The association “Apoliticality is ruining”, created by ex-coordinator Maxim Klimov, operates in Belgorod. In a conversation with RBC, Klimov added that he is not going to leave politics and plans to make a “solo career of a regional politician without the brand “Navalny”.
The former head of the Volgograd headquarters, Yevgeny Kochegin, is working on the creation of a public movement. He calls the goal of the movement the fight against corruption and electoral fraud. “We are not going to get into trouble, but we need to do something,” he noted. The former coordinator in Kaliningrad, Maria Petukhova, noted that she plans to create a femm movement. A regional You-Tube project about civil initiatives will appear in Tver, former head of the regional headquarters Andrey Prokudin told RBC. Ksenia Seredkina, the former head of the headquarters in Rostov-on-Don, also told RBC about plans to launch her socio-political project.
Dmitry Tsibirev, a former Saratov coordinator, said that he helps Irina Fatyanova run a campaign in St. Petersburg, and after that he plans to return to Saratov and train election observers.
Problems after the dissolution of the headquarters
The difficulties of former staff members are rather psychological, says Andrey Prokudin. The ex-head of the Volgograd headquarters, Yevgeny Kochegin, agrees with him: “Many are afraid, the opposition has become underground. It was not clear what was next— to leave the country or not». Sergey Bespalov, who left Russia from Irkutskhe says that he is concerned about the fate of relatives and friends from among the ex-volunteers of the headquarters. In Barnaul, after closing, external surveillance was installed behind the headquarters, “not the entire quarter was cordoned off,” the ex-head of the region Vadim Ostanin told RBC. According to him, volunteers who came to pick up furniture were also detained in the room.
Several former heads of headquarters in the regions noted that their employees faced difficulties in finding work. “In budget organizations, everyone who is somehow connected with the name of Navalny is accepted with great reluctance,” said former coordinator in Krasnoyarsk Anastasia Korsakova. The biggest difficulty, in her opinion, is that people still perceive former staff members asrepresentatives of the FBK (recognized as a foreign agent and an extremist organization, activity is prohibited in Russia). The former head of the Kaliningrad headquarters, Maria Petukhova, among other difficulties, noted the closure of the headquarters ‘social networks and the YouTube channel:” There are quite a lot of subscribers;it was unclear how to tell them now about what will happen next.”
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