Navalny’s allies keep up the fight against the Kremlin
LYUBOV SOBOL was already among the most visible dissidents in Vladimir Putin’s Russia. At 32, she has fronted a protest movement that called thousands to the streets when she and other opposition candidates were barred from standing in Moscow city elections last year.
She staged a hunger strike and a sitin at the offices of the Moscow election commission, eventually being lifted out of the building on a sofa after she refused to stand for police officers. A laughing Ms Sobol broadcast the incident live from her mobile phone to her vast social media following.
She has been sued by one of the most powerful businessmen in the country, and her husband has survived a poisoning. In 2016 an unknown assailant jabbed a syringe into her husband’s leg and injected a psychotropic substance that left him convulsing and unconscious, an attack Ms Sobol believes was linked to her activism.
Now, with opposition leader Alexei
Navalny in a coma in a German hospital after another suspected poisoning, the lawyer finds herself at the helm of his anti-kremlin organisation.
Ms Sobol is part of a trio that have promised to keep up the pressure on the authorities in Mr Navalny’s absence. She runs his Youtube channels – which have six million subscribers and produce regular reports of wrongdoing among the Russian elite – while lawyer Ivan Zhdanov heads Mr Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation and top aide Leonid Volkov oversees political campaigning. Ms Sobol told The Daily Telegraph the group had no intention of scaling back their broadcasts or corruption investigations.
They also plan to campaign against the ruling United Russia party in regional elections next month. Mr Navalny’s group no longer fields candidates itself but encourages supporters to vote for whoever has the best chance of beating Vladimir Putin’s United Russia, whether they be from communist or nationalist parties.
“I’m working 24 hours a day, seven days a week,” said Ms Sobol, who has worked with Mr Navalny for a decade. “Any injustice gives me more strength and motivates me to work harder.”
“There are dozens of people in our organisation all across the country,” Ms Sobol said, pointing to offices in 40 regions of Russia. “These are people who are professional and they are idealistic – they don’t need a boss to make sure they’re in the office from nine to five.”
She also argued the poisoning had also made an impression on the general public.
“People who were indifferent to the authorities and the opposition have come round to our side because they’ve seen the dirty methods the Kremlin uses.”