The Moscow prosecutors’ office announced that it would seek to designate the Anti-Corruption Foundation established by democracy advocate Alexander Navalny and its regional political headquarters as “extremist groups,” moving to in effect liquidate the jailed opposition leader’s political organization in Russia.
It is the most sweeping assault yet on supporters of Navalny, and comes after his two-and-a-half-year sentence on embezzlement charges and the arrest of his top aides on various charges following large protests in January and February.
In a statement released on Friday, the law enforcement body said it was seeking the designation usually reserved for violent organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Aum Shinrikyo cult because it believed that Navalny’s organizations were “creating conditions for changing the foundations of [Russia’s] constitutional order, including through the scenario of a ‘colored revolution.’”
Colored revolutions were democracy uprisings in former Soviet republics in the mid-2000s, which are seen in Russia as Western-backed coups.
Navalny’s organizations have strongly criticized Russian President Vladimir Putin and his administration, but have not called for any kind of armed rebellion to overthrow the Kremlin.
The decision effectively severs Navalny from his supporters and even from his financial donors, many of whom could be liable for financing an extremist group if they continued to provide funds.
“They’ve decided to steamroll the Anti-Corruption Foundation and the headquarters,” foundation director Ivan Zhdanov wrote. “We won’t surrender.”
The prosecutors’ office said that it had applied for a court ruling to recognize both organizations as extremist, which, if granted and upheld on appeal, would allow the Russian government to fine and imprison members of the pro-Navalny groups.
On Friday, a former camera operator for Navalny was sentenced to two years in prison on extremism charges for writing on Twitter that top Kremlin officials “didn’t deserve to live.”
The tweets came after a regional journalist lit herself on fire in an act of protest and died.
In the statement, the office also said that Navalny’s organization was acting in place of international organizations in whose activities had been deemed “undesirable.”
The statement in effect calls Navalny’s movement a front for Western interests.
Navalny’s political movement has over the past decade evolved from a lone gadfly blogger to a guerrilla newsroom, an opposition research center and a campaign strategy headquarters seeking to unseat the United Russia party by channeling votes to its most likely opponents.
The foundation has angered Russian elites by publishing investigations into their expensive watches, yachting trips, lovers’ trysts, inflated procurements and other aspects of government corruption that Navalny says has characterized the Putin era.
The foundation on Friday published an investigation into a lavish residence allegedly used by Putin, which is reportedly outfitted with a luxury spa complex and was rented from a close ally of Putin using taxpayer money.
The continuing investigations have proven that Navalny can be dangerous to the Kremlin even while he remains on hunger strike in a Russian prison. He was in January arrested upon returning to the country following treatment for a poisoning attempt on his life that he, in a joint investigation with the British investigative journalism group Bellingcat, traced back to the Russian Federal Security Service.
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