The smartest or what?

There are searches throughout the country with supporters of Navalny, activists of the Voice and the deputy of Yabloko. Almost no one doubts that this is a revenge for a "smart vote"

On Thursday, September 12, the Investigative Committee probably set a Russian record for the simultaneous number of searches. In the morning, the security forces began to come to all the headquarters of Alexei Navalny in the regions and in apartments to activists, as well as to the staff of the Voice movement, who interacted with the politician, to municipal deputies and to the independent candidate of Novosibirsk Sergey Boyko. The searches, according to the head of the headquarters of Navalny Leonid Volkov, were held on the basis of 94 decisions of the Basmanny Court, their total number exceeded two hundred.

According to observers, at least 1000 security officials were involved in investigative events, and more than 40 cities were carried out in total.

Officially, investigators are looking for evidence that could help them justify the criminal case of “laundering money in the FBK”, however, the FBK and the headquarters of Navalny are formally different structures. Decisions on searches are signed by the investigator Gabdullin: a person with the same surname heads the “Moscow business” about “riots” after inconsistent shares before the elections to the Moscow City Duma this summer.

According to the head of the Agora human rights organization Pavel Chikov, whose telegram channel on Thursday turned actually into an online broadcast of what is happening throughout the country, in all cases, any equipment was removed. Which automatically led to counteraction:

For example, Sergey Boyko from Novosibirsk, while the security forces broke the door, picked up all the hard drives on the drone and launched it in an unknown direction.

These are not the first searches in the case of “laundering of money”: criminal proceedings were launched on August 4 at the request of the editor -in -chief of the portal “Federal Investigation Agency” Sergey Sokolov: he stated that Alexey Navalny and Leonid Volkov “hid information about the fate of funds received at cryptocurrency during the 2018 election campaign”. The SK statement about the initiation of the case said about the “legalization of funds in the amount of about 1 billion rubles”, later this amount was quietly reduced to 75 million. In the FBK itself, any accusations are refuted, and the current wave of searches is associated with the project of September 8, successfully held on a single election on September 8.

“I spoke many times and again: in the Kremlin they can count. We just underestimate our strength, but they understand everything.

They are really scary and I want all these ventures with collective actions in the elections (and not only) burn with red -hot iron ”,

- The public statement by Alexei Navalny says on his website. In the current searches, indeed, there are a lot of strange: according to Navalny, they still can’t explain to them, “on what crime the FBK earned money that he laundered.” In addition, there is no direct connection between the participation of the Voosa employees in the projects of Navalny and the criminal case. Surrounded by the coordinator of the Voice in Kazan, Mikhail Tikhonov, they say that he is not charged with him, and he himself goes as a witness. At the same time, he "seized a laptop and a bunch of papers - which, it is incomprehensible." And all this happened at six in the morning.

The searches basically began at six in the morning: according to the FBK, it was an attempt to disorient the entire organization and prevent it from coordinating for collective actions. But this is not the only ambiguous action of the security forces.

• In Pskov, they began to check SMS messages on phones at minor children activist of Navalny’s headquarters Andrei Egorov, and his wife demanded to show the rest on a bank card.

• In Chelyabinsk, employees of the headquarters of Navalny needed medical care (but no one was hospitalized).

• In terms of offices, investigators chop off cables and surveillance cameras.

• In Yekaterinburg, they came to the former head of the headquarters of Navalny Yuri Kuzminykh when he took a relative to the hospital: only a daughter remained at home, who was forced to open the door, sending his neighbors.

• An additional repressive measure, along with searches: activists began to block accounts - they all have a minus of 75 million rubles by the decision of the Basmanny Court. The mothers of the Pskov activist Egorov additionally blocked the score from 100 thousand rubles - these were all her savings.

In parallel, searches went to the candidate for deputies to the Pskov City Duma - a member of Yabloko Nikolai Kuzmin, who has nothing to do with Navalny's headquarters.

“My version is that, in the framework of the criminal case against the FBC, in the regions they came home to all people who somehow participated in Navalny’s protests,” said “new” deputy Lev Schlosberg. - In a situation where the case is initiated in fact, the UK can come to anyone and anywhere with any questions, and the citizen remains defenseless. Gentlemen waited for the end of the elections, they were clearly asked not to excite the society until September 8th. The elections are over, the masks are dropped, if they were, these masks. This is in its purest form a special operation of intimidation against civil society. ”

Other experts generally also agree that on September 8, it became not only a date, after which everything is allowed, but also a trigger due to a “smart vote”. “Since the elections passed, and still far away, the authorities decided that it was now the time to defeat the FBK. You can now not be afraid of protest voting, but most likely, large street protests about the events, most likely, will not be able to organize, ”says political scientist Abbas Gallyamov. - The authorities cannot touch Navalny after the events of this summer. The oppositionist broke the main lever, with which the regime controlled the electoral process for many years: we are talking about the prevention of opposition candidates.

Smart voting showed that now, even in conditions of almost complete absence of their own candidates, oppositionists can defeat the authorities. ”

“Voice” went to about the same thing, adds Gallamov: this is the main mechanism of resistance to elective fraud. “Having declared war on Navalny, the authorities decided to finish the“ voice ”at the same time. “The principle of seven troubles is one answer,” the political scientist states. It must be added that the Voice movement and its supporters shortly before the elections got from the CEC (Ella Pamfilova openly doubted their observations), as well as from federal channels and from the so -called “Prigozhin media”, where the “Voice” was accused of spreading “fakes” about the elections.

Ultimately, everything can be explained by the fear of the authorities before any possible unification of civil society and the opposition, the political strategist Alexei Makarkin said, and this is in pure form phantom pains. “There are memories of the end of the 80s, when different dissatisfied united. They quickly dispersed, but this time was enough to overthrow the power. Therefore, the main task now is to prevent any rapprochement, ”says Makarkin. - “Voice” is an organization that works with Navalny people, and the authorities believe that they undermine the authority of the elections. People who make decisions, “Voice” and “Navalnovites” are now perceived through a comma. Perhaps an attempt will be made to find general financing. Which can then be brought under "laundering".

The expert adds: there is an attempt to put political pressure on activists throughout the country. In the end, she did not cause anything but irritation: the FBK has already promised to restore the structure destroyed by investigators in the near future, and the security forces are unlikely to rely on public support in the case of “laundering money” from the volunteers and senior parents of elderly parents.