I’m looking at this document from the Justice Ministry and I almost feel proud. Do you know how many ministries and government agencies are involved in the operation to shut down our regional network, built over the course of the campaign?
- FSB (Federal Security Service)
- Ministry of Internal Affairs
- Justice Ministry
- Election Commission
- Financial Monitoring Service
- Department of National Policy
- Committee for Public Relations
- Roskomnadzor (the federal media and communications regulator)
- Tax Service
The state seems to do nothing else except fight us and the voter strike.
We found all this out almost by accident. It suddenly turned out that the Justice Ministry is demanding the liquidation of our foundation “The Fifth Season” — the legal entity through which we handled all campaign payments, and now the payments for the strike. After all, we have to rent offices, pay taxes and salaries, and cover campaign materials.
Usually, when the Justice Ministry doesn’t like an NGO, it liquidates it through a long bureaucratic slog — first demands to correct violations, then warnings, then suspensions, and so on.
But here it was straight to liquidation. That’s illegal, so of course we went to see what documents had been submitted to the court.
It turned out there was a huge file. It had been assembled by a special interagency working group created to fight us.
The same file also contains some hellish LifeNews articles, appeals from anonymous citizens, posts, and screenshots. It has everything imaginable.
And it’s pretty funny that the basis for launching the inspection was a letter from the governor of Kemerovo Region, who had himself received a letter from some anonymous tenants. They complained about “gatherings of unemployed people carrying newspapers and leaflets for Navalny.”
The prosecutor of Kemerovo Region immediately wrote to Moscow, and in Moscow they created (or rather legalized) a special group dealing with us.
Well, I can’t say we’re surprised.
I can even say we’re partly satisfied — our strike has become so painful for them that they need to destroy our legal entities as quickly as possible so we can’t rent premises, and so on. In other words, they want to make organizational work and coordination as difficult as possible, and most importantly, cut off our funding.
Up to now, we’ve been so effective primarily because we had money independent of the Kremlin — yours.
Over 13 months of the campaign, we raised and spent 275 million rubles (about $4.8 million at the time), collected from 145,500 people.
Compare that with Putin, whose election account received money from 2 (two) private individuals. That’s 72,000 times fewer than we had together.
The file of materials is so thick and heavy that there’s no doubt they’ll try to cobble together a criminal case too. Let me remind you that after the mayoral campaign, such a case was opened over the alleged “theft of money from Navalny for his election campaign.” There are no victims in that case. I myself have written a hundred times that no one stole anything from me, but the case is still hanging around. Lyaskin and Yankauskas are under travel restrictions because of it, while Ashurkov is wanted and living in forced exile.
I’m almost sure that this time they’ll make life difficult for Volkov and several others as well.
Are we afraid? No. From the very beginning, we understood that they had no real way to fight us except by fabricating criminal cases. What else can they do to stop us now?
Nothing — because there are so many of you. Nearly 200,000 volunteers. More than 700,000 people who signed.
Our plans are not changing and cannot be changed. And the authorities will achieve nothing if you continue to support us. We spent your money honestly and effectively, so I’m asking you to keep helping us and to chip in now for organizing the strike as well. Our headquarters are still operating; no one has scattered, despite the mounting pressure. We will run exactly the same kind of campaign, but now for people not to go to the polls and not to recognize the authority that emerges from their results.
Many thanks in advance if you’re staying with us and are ready to throw in a few of your hard-earned rubles.
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