If I asked you to recall all the lawsuits recently filed against me, the ACF, and ACF staff by the state, quasi-state structures, and various lackeys of United Russia (the Kremlin-backed ruling party) like the Armenia restaurant, a noodle shop, or a taxi service, you probably wouldn’t be able to name them all, even if you’ve been following closely.
To be honest, even I couldn’t list them all.
There are a great many lawsuits, but in this strange room crammed with claims for tens of millions of rubles, there stands a huge elephant, and on its side it says: in fact, the ACF (as well as the organizers and participants of rallies, and the candidates barred from the ballot) are precisely the ones who did NOT break the law. The people suing them are the real habitual lawbreakers.
And on the elephant’s other side is something equally obvious: the order to organize this lawlessness was given personally by Russian President Putin, in response to ACF’s investigations and his party’s rout in Moscow.
So we, too, have decided to file a lawsuit. Just one. But the one that gets most directly to the heart of the matter.
Today, more than 10 ACF employees, the ACF itself, and I as its founder are filing a lawsuit against Vladimir Putin.
We demand that his inaction be declared unlawful. As the guarantor of the Constitution (Article 80, Part 2 of the Constitution), he has failed to respond and failed to take measures to stop the gross and systematic violations of constitutional rights (the inviolability of the home, the right to disseminate information and express opinions about corruption, and the right to association) that have been taking place in the “ACF case” literally dozens of times a day for a very long time now.
We demand that Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin’s actions in organizing this criminal prosecution (the fabrication of the ACF case) be declared unlawful, since given the scale of the persecution, we consider him the organizer of this case.
You can read the full text of the lawsuit here.
Yes, yes, we know all about Russian courts, and the Tverskoy District Court in particular. But don’t treat this lawsuit as a political statement. We are acting within the law. And we are doing what, under the law, ought to be the subject of judicial review in the Beautiful Russia of the Future. We want to establish a legal fact:
- We place personal responsibility for the absolute and demonstrative lawlessness in the “ACF case” on Putin himself.
- We are prepared to defend this position in court, and in an independent court we will prove it.
- Putin’s actions in organizing this unlawful, politically motivated persecution must be investigated, and sooner or later they will be.
We refuse to accept that in our own country we have fewer rights than a noodle shop whose lawsuits on the theory that “people would have eaten more noodles if not for Navalny and Sobol” are accepted and upheld, while our complaints about hundreds of illegal seizures, searches, account freezes, and so on are ignored.
If we’re being honest about the real score, who is behind all this? Clearly Putin. So he is the one we are suing.
These are difficult times for us right now, but we assure everyone that the ACF and our entire network of штабs (regional political offices) will only emerge stronger as a result.
Stay with us and support us.