Moscow prosecutor sues to make opposition leaders pay National Guard troops who arrested their protesters

Moscow’s lead prosecutor has submitted a five-million-ruble ($76,550) lawsuit against Alexei Navalny, Lyubov Sobol, and other prominent opposition activists. While the lawsuit’s existence was already publicly known, neither its amount nor its purpose had previously been reported. MBK Media wrote from the Cheremushkinsky Court that the state is seeking five million rubles to cover salary costs for the Russian National Guard troops who were deployed to arrest opposition protesters over the summer. Some of that sum is also intended to cover fuel costs.

The city prosecutor’s lawsuit joins several others from the city’s public transport system and private businesses. The amount of money courts have awarded to those plaintiffs has already reached nearly five million rubles. Each legal claim has been related to protests that saw large crowds march through downtown Moscow on a weekly basis. The protesters demanded primarily that independent candidates be permitted to run for the Moscow City Duma and that previously jailed protesters be released.