Very quiet town

Preparations for the elections have obviously entered an aggressive stage, and we are not talking about debates and campaigns of parties. Government aggression is best felt at the regional level: in Samara, local authorities seem to have decided to cover up everything they can. Novaya Gazeta in Samara suffered the most - troubles at the editorial office began back in May, when (an amazing coincidence) the “March of Dissent” took place in the city, timed to coincide with the EU-Russia summit. Traditionally, the reason for criminal prosecution was unlicensed software. As a result, for the last two months the editorial office has been in critical mode (last week the last computer and all financial documentation were seized from the office), a criminal case was opened against the editor-in-chief, and it was eventually decided to stop publishing the newspaper.

But you won’t be satisfied with “Novaya” alone: ​​at the end of last week, the Samara Regional Court began considering the claim of the Federal Registration Service to liquidate the regional branch of the non-governmental organization “Golos”, which monitors the legality of elections. The lawsuit against Golos was filed by Rosregistration, which alleges that the organization “constantly violates the law,” does not provide reports on its work, and generally engages in non-statutory activities. Human rights activists are confident that before the elections the authorities are simply trying to get rid of unwanted observers.