THE Russia arrested two associates of the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexei Navalny, said today a prominent opposition activist, who added that they could face charges of extremism that involve long prison sentences.
Russian authorities have in recent months cracked down on organizations linked to 45-year-old Navalny, who is considered the most vocal critic of the president. Vladimir Putin. He is serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for violating his conditional release in a fraud-related and politically motivated case, he claims.
In June, a Russian court ruled that Navalny’s anti-corruption organization was “extremist.”
Then, after his associates reorganized around a new network of organizations for Russia’s September parliamentary elections, authorities began investigating members of the campaign with the same accusations of extremism.
State investigators today brought the former heads of provincial polling stations in the Siberian cities of Tomsk and Irkutsk for questioning, Leonid Volkov, an associate of Navalny, who lives in exile, wrote in the Telegram message application. Volkov said he had tried to persuade the two activists, Xenia Fadegeva and Zakhar Sharapulov, to leave Russia, as he and other dissidents had done, but they refused.
The Commission of Inquiry, the state agency tasked with investigating crimes and prosecuting, was not immediately available for comment.
THE Navalny served last year in Germany for medical treatment after his poisoning in Siberia with a substance which according to Western experts was the military neurotoxic agent Novitsok.
The Russian government denies being behind Navalny’s poisoning and has rejected the experts’ findings – which led to a new wave of sanctions against Russia – and accused the West of conducting a mud campaign against it.
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