Russian police carry out mass raids against opposition activists
Russian law enforcement authorities have carried out mass raids on the homes and offices of supporters of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
Searches took place in 39 towns and cities on Thursday, four days after the ruling United Russia party, which supports President Vladimir Putin, lost a third of its seats in the Moscow city assembly while retaining its dominant position nationwide.
Navalny had urged his supporters to vote tactically in last weekend’s local and regional elections to try to reduce the chances of Kremlin-backed candidates winning seats, a strategy that appears to have had some success in the capital.
“Putin is very angry,” Navalny wrote on social media after the raids. “This is a case where the actions of the police are no different from those of burglars.”
Authorities told activists that the searches were related to a money-laundering investigation into Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, an organisation that has published embarrassing investigations into what it says is the wrongdoing of corrupt officials.
State investigators last month opened a criminal investigation into the alleged laundering of 1bn roubles (£12.2bn) by the foundation itself. It also froze a slew of bank accounts linked to the foundation, a move Navalny’s allies said was a trumped-up attempt to cripple his political movement.
Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s spokeswoman, said on Thursday that the scale and nature of the latest raids were unprecedented.
Leonid Volkov, another senior Navalny ally, published a list of towns and cities where activists had been targeted.
“The overall number of searches is over 150 and no less than 1,000 Russian law enforcement employees are involved [in the raids],” Volkov wrote on social media. He linked the searches to Navalny’s tactical voting strategy and said the homes of activists, their relatives and the regional headquarters of Navalny’s movement were being targeted.
Activists were being taken in for questioning, and technical hardware was being confiscated, he said.
“The state has two tasks – to frighten and steal,” Volkov wrote. “It’s obvious that the aim of this operation is to destroy our headquarters structure and to obstruct the work of our [regional] headquarters.”
Golos, a non-governmental organisation that monitors Russian elections, said on Thursday that the homes of its activists were also being raided by the authorities.
Navalny and his supporters organised a wave of protests after popular opposition politicians were barred from standing in the Moscow parliament election, prompting a police crackdown.
The 43-year-old opposition leader missed several of the rallies while serving a 30-day jail term for organising previous unauthorised protests.