At this very moment, proceedings are continuing in the Moscow City Court to declare the ACF and Navalny’s regional headquarters extremist organizations. There is absolutely no doubt about what Judge Polyga will decide—whether today or in a month. There is no suspense here, nor could there be.
What is more interesting is something else: what exactly is in the case file, and what evidence of our “extremism” will prosecutor Popov bring to court? There are 14 non-classified volumes alone. We studied them and carefully read every page. And do you know what?
There is nothing there. Seriously. Exactly zero evidence of extremism by the ACF or the headquarters. Soon we will remove personal data from the materials—it takes a long time—and publish the entire non-classified portion for public access. You will be able to see for yourselves. We are also challenging the classified status of the remaining part today by filing a counterclaim against the prosecutor’s office.
Spoiler: what is actually in there? A pile of materials describing the entire history of the persecution of Alexei Navalny, ACF staff, headquarters staff, and volunteers. The general idea is: here is a fine under Article 20.2 from 2017, here he got 15 days in detention as the organizer of a rally, and here are more administrative cases, and more still. Mixed in are even cases that have absolutely nothing to do with the ACF or the headquarters.
In the eyes of the prosecution, extremism is basically just the sum total of administrative cases. By that logic, you could become an extremist simply by, for example, getting a dozen fines for jaywalking.
From all these materials, the only thing that stands out is a new criminal case against Navalny, Zhdanov, and Volkov under the rather exotic Article 239 of the Criminal Code: creating a non-profit organization that infringes on the personhood and rights of citizens.
The “infringement on personhood” of Putin and his friends consists of the fact that the ACF and the headquarters spent years exposing his theft. And now everything becomes very logical. Clearly, Putin and his officials sincerely believe that stealing is their lawful right. And when the ACF and the headquarters fight against that theft, they are infringing on that right.
The prosecutor’s office states it plainly, in black and white: we are forbidding you from fighting corruption. Fighting corruption, taking part in elections, and participating in rallies—that is extremism.
But we are not giving up. Today, Leonid Volkov spoke about what will happen next with Navalny’s headquarters and what regional strategy will look like going forward:
We will explain later how the ACF’s work will be reorganized.