The Federal Antimonopoly Service, which is supposed to protect citizens from cartels and restrictions on competition, has decided to play election watchdog instead. To that end, it even sent a special letter to the Central Election Commission, signed by FAS chief Igor Artemyev. The letter says that Navalny and “structures under his control” could interfere in the elections by buying ads on YouTube. It is a pity that Putin’s “controlled structures,” in the form of companies linked to Timchenko and the Rotenbergs, do not prompt the writing of such letters. If they did, there would certainly be enough money in the pension fund.
Of course, it would be better if the FAS focused on its actual job instead of offloading the work onto RosPil (Navalny’s anti-corruption project), which uncovers several cartels worth billions of rubles every year. But this situation is also upsetting because FAS chief Artemyev has long been a member of Yabloko’s (a liberal Russian political party) Federal Political Committee. And Yabloko is also against raising the retirement age.
The Russia of the Future party (which, incidentally, I did not manage to join because I was under arrest during its congress) issued a statement on the matter.