Team Navalny adds ‘foreign agent’ Alexey Venediktov to its ‘corrupt officials and warmongers’ list

Alexey Navalny’s associates at the Anti-Corruption Foundation have updated their list of “corrupt officials and warmongers.” One of the new additions to the list is Alexey Venediktov, a well-known journalist and former editor-in-chief of the Echo of Moscow radio station. Since April 2022, Venediktov is persecuted in Russia as a “foreign agent.”

The ACF claims that, as the head of the Public Election Monitoring Staff, Venediktov falsified the results of electronic voting in the 2021 State Duma election campaign in Moscow. The ACF also states that

as a result of falsification, the overall results of the vote in all the electoral districts were completely changed, leading to the victory of pro-regime candidates, who lost the election, based on results from conventional polling stations.

The ACF’s updated “warmonger” list has ten other new names on it. They include election officials, members of the Russian presidential staff, and Yamal and iFly airline executives who transport conscripts to the war zone on their planes.

As a “foreign agent,” Venediktov is legally compelled to disclaim his “foreign agency” in every publication and social media post. When asked what he thought about the ACF’s accusations, he replied ironically: “The disclaimer block will have to get bigger.” He also said that

given what’s happening in Ukraine, where people are dying, given that Alexey Navalny is threatened with 30 years in prison, given that Akunin’s name is being obliterated from his playbills, and his books are removed from store bookshelves — this is such a trifle, honestly, it’s nothing.

When asked whether he planned to do anything about the new designation, Venediktov asked in turn:

And what do you think I should “do”? When the state proclaims me a foreign agent, I appeal to the Russian court. When these people, too, call me an enemy, I have nowhere to go with my appeals. Where should I appeal this? With the US State Department? I have no recourse.

• Alexey Venediktov is among the initiators and supporters of electronic voting in Russia. In 2019, he prompted the development of software to enable the e-vote.
• During the 2021 Duma election, Venediktov headed the Public Election Monitoring Staff. After the Communist party and Yabloko refused to accept the election results, calling them fraudulent, Venediktov opposed invalidating the results, insisting that “the electronic voting system is fair, transparent, and reliable.”
• The list of corrupt officials and “warmongers” compiled by Team Navalny lists more than 6,000 people, under categories of “warmongers,” “war organizers,” “propagandists,” “corrupt officials,” “public Putin supporters,” “key officials,” etc. It also has a “Top 200” segment, approved by the US House of Representatives to serve as a basis for individual sanctions.

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