Primorye: security forces against Navalny

The opening of the next headquarters of the presidential campaign of Alexei Navalny in Vladivostok met the local authorities extremely harshly even by Russian standards: a real hunt is being held for supporters of the opposition policy. Why exactly in Primorye - the New Times sorted out

Alexei Navalny himself did not come to the opening of his headquarters in Vladivostok on May 15, the associates dissuaded: the region is far away, the trip is troublesome, and after the operation just made, complications could arise. Instead, Leonid Volkov arrived, head of the headquarters. Arrived alone. But they met him as if an entire enemy army was landing in the Primorsky Territory. On the way from the airport, traffic police officers stopped a car with a Moscow guest five times (sometimes every 500 meters), once they took it and did not give a passport back for a long time. And they generally wanted to evacuate the car itself, because supposedly a sticker on the door with the numbers of the body and the engine is “not native”, but was re-laid from somewhere.

Moving activists

Under the same pretext on the night of May 15, on the way from the airport to the city, the car was detained by lawyer Maxim Chikhunov, an employee of the Vladivostok headquarters of Navalny: Chikhunov is in Vihinov, Konstantin Ekimov, responsible for the protection of the headquarters. Fifteen people drove up to Maxim and Konstantin, including two deputies of the regional and urban level from the Communist Party - Artem Samsonov and Yuri Kuchin. All of them stood in the rain for four hours, waiting for the issuance of the protocol about the detention of the car. As a result, the police protocol did not give, but they drove the tow truck. Then Samsonov and Kuchin barricaded in the car of the car and did not allow him to take him to the arrest.

“Yes, it was always like that! After all, we have a police authorities, led by Gusev ( head of the city Internal Affairs Directorate, Colonel Sergey Gusev. - NT) bends under power, ”explains the police officer in a conversation with the magazine correspondent Artem Samsonov. - Gusev, I think, is not familiar with such a concept as officer honor. And in other regions, perhaps not so. ”

“Gennady Zyuganov calls Navalny“ New Hitler ”on the air of federal television channels, and in the meantime, the deputy of the regional parliament from the Communist Party from the police, in the Primorye of the Navalny Headquarters”

Maxim Chikhunov, after the incident, went home not home on the road, but to the hotel - the associates warned that they were "already waiting" near the house. But for the authorities - the morning of the evening is wiser. As soon as the next morning, Maxim arrived home and went for a walk with the dog, he was immediately detained and taken to the police department by the staff of the patrol service-allegedly he stole something. Then Maxim spent the whole day in different police branches, it was not possible to remove his fingerprints immediately-computers were hanging from behind the virus. True, the police drove the opposition of the coffee, bought cigarettes, gave money for the return trip, but they took the mobile phone - “to study”.

Meanwhile, in another area of ​​the city, the deputy-communist Kuchin literally ran away from two police officers in civilian clothes, who very persistently demanded that he go to give some testimony with them without any agenda. Kuchin helped to hide, managing to distract the security forces with conversations, Artem Samsonov and his brother Alexander, a social activist and a member of the “Partnership of Initiative Citizens”. And after a couple of hours, Alexander quietly, without too much noise, observing all the rules of conspiracy, brought Oleg to Vladivostok again, another employee of Navalny’s headquarters.

“Gennady Zyuganov calls Navalny“ New Hitler ”on the air of federal television channels, and in the meantime, on Primorsky land, Navalny’s staff headquarters are protected from the police deputy of the regional parliament from the Communist Party and a semi-communist-semi-proliberal from the City Duma,” it ironizes in a conversation with NT, referring to Samsonov and Kuchina, Vladivostokovo. Political strategist Vyacheslav Belyakov. In his opinion, this fact indicates that in Russia domestic politics is so domestic that often does not obey federal trends at all; Everyone in a situation of permanent conflict protects only their own interests, not paying attention to the means of achieving goals.

At the same time, Belyakov draws attention to the fact that Navalny himself prefers to be silent about his unexpected alliance with the Vladivostok Communists, although it is such an alliance, according to the political strategist, can become a “prototype of the most wide opposition on the basis of a regional agenda” for a politician. ”

Revenge for March 26

However, semi -detective episodes with car arrests and pursuit were preceded by much more dramatic events. On May 5, at 6 o’clock in the morning, the security forces of Navalny’s headquarters in Vladivostok Dmitry Zubarev broke out to the teeth: they broke the door, laid the “malicious criminal” and his retirement parents on the floor, and then turned everything upside down. As a result, Zubarev was arrested for disobedience to the police officer and on the same day they gave 15 days.

The coordinator - at that time - Sofya Krivtsova’s headquarters also survived and a search at 6 in the morning, and withdrawing a laptop with a phone. They allegedly could have shots from the rally on March 26, after which one of the police police officers of Vladivostok was broken by a finger - a criminal case was instituted on this fact. As a result, Sophia could not withstand the pressure and left the headquarters.

With the premises for the headquarters and press conference of Leonid Volkov, everything turned out strangely. At first, the premises were given, and then they called back (or wrote SMS): "Sorry, it will not work." Or just de -energized the building. Or closed the entrance to it without explanation. This happened ten times. And even on the opening day of the headquarters, the next owner of the building suddenly changed the locks - the opening ceremony had to hold the opening ceremony in the square in the square near the house 41 on Oceansky Prospekt.

Vyacheslav Belyakov explains the unprecedented activity of the security forces with success in Vladivostok of the opposition protest on March 26: “They (the authorities) were simply obliged to show who the master was in the house.” True, the political strategist does not consider pressure on the supporters of Navalny by the authorities “unprecedentedly tough”: “Everything was done quite calmly and at the same time effectively. Yes, it was not possible to avoid the scandal, but the headquarters of Navalny did not actually open. ”

The last argument

A much more surprise, according to the interlocutor of the magazine, was that in Vladivostok there was no “not a single pro -government activist, patriot or Cossack, and the biggest claim to the opposition activists was a produced lawn where they gathered.” In other regions, Belyakov will not remember this. It turns out that the authorities, on the one hand, were pressed on the supporters of Navalny, but at the same time the opening of his headquarters "they were neither politically nor technologically worked out."

Political scientist Denis Shiryakov is also of a similar opinion: “Pucked, conspiratorial premises, fake mailings, arrests - yes, this is nowhere to have been anywhere else.” But it was not, he reminds, and another: “In Vladivostok, there were no pro -government civil groups that would confront Navalny activists. I’m not talking about the NOD, Air Defense, LDPR and other fighters with “fifth columns”, “liberals” and “color revolutions”. Even the vaunted “Young Guard” did not dare to mobilize the remnants of their activists and bring them to a picket opposite the meeting of Navalny (limited to posts on social networks). ” As a result, Shiryakov summarizes, the local authorities simply had no other support, except for the security forces: “The gross official force turned out to be their last argument. No other tools - distraction, information noise, silence, counter -propaganda - are no longer at the disposal of the authorities. ”

The situation, according to the political scientist, can also be explained by the fact that local elites perceive Governor Vladimir Miklushevsky as a “lame duck” - a politician who modifies his own and which is simply short -sighted. In the ranking of governors, Miklushevsky takes the last place, a series of scandals around him, and his former political strategist and part-time former director of the Admiral hockey club Ilya Mitkin-Spokoinov is under arrest in large fraud when purchasing sports equipment.

The point of no return was a rally against corruption, organized by Navalny on March 26. Surprisingly experts, in Vladivostok he gathered about 2 thousand people and was widely lit in the media

“Could organize a festival for young people or some other distracting event like an extraordinary“ Tiger Day ”. But, alas, even fantasies were not enough. As a result, with arrests and chases they only excited volunteers and made Vladivostok a real political Mordor, ”Shiryakov summarizes.

Protest? Prohibit!

Another interlocutor of NT, political scientist Pavel Nalivayko, explaining the origins of such a strict position of the regional authorities in relation to the opposition, recalls the protests that covered Primorye since the beginning of 2017 and also coincided with a series of loud arrests surrounded by Governor Miklushevsky, with reputation scandals and rumors about his ambulance. In Vladivostok, they rally against the Plato system, twice-against the Era-Glonass system ( see NT No. 12 of April 10, 2017 ), and numerous single pickets passed. The regional authorities were not able to resolve protests, and therefore, Nalyvaiko reasoned, they decided to simply ban these protests. It turned out so -so: the action caused a greater opposition, the opposition began to spin the flywheel of protest activity.

“The point of no return was a rally against corruption, organized by Navalny on March 26,” says Pavel Nalivaiko. “To the surprise of experts, in Vladivostok he gathered about 2 thousand people and was widely lit in the media.” The aftertaste was unexpected: the authorities took a break. But instead of doing work on mistakes, the leadership of the region continued to aggravate the conflict with the local opposition, the expert said.

On May 1, the Communists walked along the central street of Vladivostok with banners, which depicted the leaders of the country and local politicians with the inscriptions of the "Croilus". “Against this background, evidence surfaced: the governor is unable to control the situation, and this will lead to an even greater increase in protest, which may well intercept the headquarters of Navalny,” Nalyvaiko notes. And it reminds that there were already precedents: in 2011-2012, the Primorsky Territory was one of the leaders in protest activity in the country. And if the political leadership in the stupor, the “guarantors of stability” in the Primorsky Territory, albeit using methods that not everyone likes, decided to perform power structures.

Photo: Sergey Sokolov