If you want to hide a leaf, hide it on a tree.
That’s how it works with jailings, too. The authorities—and, as far as I can tell, Sergei Semyonovich personally, looking remarkably refreshed—have decided to use the huge uproar around the illegal arrest of Ivan Golunov to quietly sink to a new low and carry out another completely unprecedented arrest.
They seem to think that journalists and liberals are like Pavlov’s dog: as long as the brighter light is on, they’ll keep barking at that one and won’t notice the other.
Leonid Volkov, the head of our штаб, finished serving a 20-day jail term this morning for the September 9 rally against raising the retirement age. Absolutely everything was violated in this case—from the statute of limitations to territorial jurisdiction. Volkov wasn’t even in the country during the rally; he was commenting on the livestream from a studio in Lithuania.
Today at 6 a.m., half an hour before his term was due to end, the valiant police officers came to him and said: Leonid, here’s what we’ve been thinking. You served time for calls to attend rallies. But probably that was for calling people to the rally in Moscow. And there was also a rally in St. Petersburg. So now we’re taking you to Tverskoy Court and locking you up again for the rally in St. Petersburg. And after that, there are plenty more cities on the list.
Here’s a lovely detail. When they took Volkov away, his term had already expired, which meant they were supposed to return his phone. They gave back both phones he had on him when he was arrested. So of course he started trying to call his lawyers and family. But the phones didn’t work—even though they had worked the day before during his permitted call.
Volkov spent two hours baffled before thinking to take the phones apart, only to discover that the resourceful police had covered the battery contacts with pieces of transparent tape. By the time you notice and figure it out, precious time is lost.
So when people ask whether these people are capable of planting drugs—of course they are. It’s not just possible; it’s routine for them.
We know perfectly well what is happening. Look around and find the people in this country who are campaigning against this government in the September elections. Do you see any of the establishment parties doing it? Any prominent politicians doing anything? No. You’ll see only our штаб, led by Volkov, and yourselves—those supporting the campaign.
We don’t even have a party, but we are the only ones coordinating efforts to inflict maximum damage on United Russia. That’s why we created Smart Voting. The authorities are very afraid of it.
We only have two candidates from ACF (the Anti-Corruption Foundation): Sobol and Zhdanov. But it was we who organized the Signature Collection Center (here is its Facebook page), which will help all independent candidates collect signatures—a fantastically difficult and prohibitive procedure. We are promoting the five main candidates, the strongest ones.
Leonid Volkov was supposed to open the Signature Collection Center to the general public today.
We are campaigning in St. Petersburg. And again, there are no “our” candidates there—we support every decent candidate in order to reduce the number of deputies from the Party of Crooks and Thieves.
I demand the immediate release of Leonid Volkov.
I urge everyone to join this demand and not let yourselves be fooled by this simple trick: hiding a jail cell for Volkov inside house arrest for Golunov.
We demand the release of Ivan Golunov, and we demand the release of Leonid Volkov. They are innocent, and their arrests are politically motivated.
I ask everyone to share this text.