Russian BBC: Putin’s administration is behind police visits to Navalny supporters identified in data leaks

In mid-August, police officers in cities across Russia began showing up at the homes of Navalny supporters identified in data leaks. And according to a new report from the BBC Russian Service, these checks are being carried out at the request of Putin’s administration.

Sources close to the Federal Security Service (FSB) and the Investigative Committee told the Russian BBC that the Presidential Administration’s Domestic Policy Directorate asked police officials to conduct these “preventative interviews.”

Allegedly, these police visits are intended to intimidate active opposition supporters and ward off the possibility of new protests after the State Duma elections in September.

“The authorities perceive all of the people on the call lists as the opposition’s assets. If they were prepared to vote for Navalny, registered on his [websites], or went to rallies, it means they can be considered his assets. So as not to guess whether or not this ‘asset’ will come out [in protest] after the elections, the authorities decided to prevent this possibility in advance.

The tactic is to intimidate the asset. They aren’t going to start cases against these people as of yet, so as not to whip up a protest wave.”

One of the Russian BBC’s sources added that Putin’s administration “contracted the Interior Ministry” to pay visits to Navalny’s supporters months ago. “They’ve been perplexed by this since January. They have no time to solve crimes, but they’re toiling over this nonsense,” the source said.

In response to questions about the alleged connections between the police checks and the Kremlin, Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Russian BBC, “I can’t say anything. I have no information.”

• In mid-August, police officials in Moscow and other Russian cities began calling and visiting the homes of Navalny supporters whose personal information leaked online. As of September 1, 1,489 people across 11 Russian regions had reached out to OVD-Info after receiving calls or visits from the police.
• In April, a database with the email addresses of Navalny supporters who had registered their intent to attend a rally on the website free.navalny.com was made publicly available. Team Navalny confirmed the authenticity of the database and apologized for the leak. Navalny’s associates later attributed the leak to St. Petersburg activist Fedor Gorozhanko, who worked for the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) from 2016 to 2019. Gorozhanko denies the allegations.
• In June, reports emerged that a database of Smart Vote subscribers was up for sale on a deep web forum. Among other things, the database supposedly contained the residential addresses of Smart Vote participants from Moscow and the Moscow region. On August 16, the business newspaper Kommersant reported that expanded databases containing the residential addresses and places of work of of Smart Vote subscribers had appeared on Telegram channels and on the darknet.