Ex-volunteer of Navalny's headquarters in Arkhangelsk was recruited by the police

In Arkhangelsk, the police recruited a former volunteer of Navalny’s headquarters to collect evidence in the case of distribution of pornography against the head of the headquarters, Andrei Borovikov. This was reported by MBKH Media with reference to the materials of the criminal case.

According to the publication, volunteer Alexander Durynin told police that in October 2019 he discovered a video for the song Pussy by Rammstein on Borovikov’s personal page on VKontakte. After a month or two, Durynin realized that he was “disappointed in the ideas of the headquarters,” and then decided to inform the police about Borovikov’s posting of the clip, since he decided that it was “certainly prohibited by law.”

The police offered to help Durynin collect evidence in the case against Borovikov. When Borovikov arranged a meeting for the former volunteer at headquarters, Durynin passed this information on to the police. The security forces provided Durynin with a listening device, on which he recorded a conversation during a meeting with Borovikov.

“One of the headquarters volunteers was recruited by the police, and they put a microphone and a hidden camera on him. The case file contains his testimony that he experienced great agony after seeing the Rammstein video, and went to the police himself and wrote a statement. There is one witness who was also very offended by this clip, but for some reason, when he wrote a statement to the police, his information was not recorded, and he was never found. And three or four more insulted witnesses whom the police found,” MBKH Media quotes Borovikov.

In October, the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters in Arkhangelsk, Andrei Borovikov, was charged with distributing pornography (clause “b” of Part 3 of Article 242 of the Criminal Code) because of the Rammstein “Pussy” video.

On November 25, Andrei Borovikov reported that Amnesty International recognized his persecution as politically motivated. The corresponding document is available to the editorial staff of OVD-Info.

The director of the Russian representative office of Amnesty International, Natalya Zvyagina, notes that Borovikov’s opinion “often diverges from the position of the executive branch, and his criticism is clearly not liked by some of its representatives.” Amnesty International considers both criminal cases against the activist to be revenge for his social activities.

• On September 29, security forces conducted a search of Borovikov in connection with the distribution of pornography. When the headquarters coordinator told the employees that he would let them in after the lawyer arrived, the law enforcement officers replied that they were not obliged to wait for him.
• In early September, the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters in Arkhangelsk, Andrei Borovikov, was fined for promoting drugs on the Internet (Article 6.13 of the Administrative Code). The court found it in a video with Decl’s song posted on Borovikov’s VKontakte page.
• In September 2019, the Oktyabrsky District Court of Arkhangelsk found Borovikov guilty under Article 212.1 of the Criminal Code (repeated violations of the established procedure for holding an action). He was sentenced to 400 hours of compulsory labor. A criminal case was opened after the activist’s participation in several peaceful protests against the construction of a landfill at Shies station. The appellate court upheld the verdict unchanged.