Top Navalny aide Ivan Zhdanov reports his father’s arrest on criminal charges

On Monday, March 29, Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Alexey Navalny’s anti-corruption non-profit, wrote on Facebook that a criminal case had been opened against his 66-year-old father, Yuri.

According to his son, Zhdanov senior stands accused of abuse of office:

“My father worked in the North, in the Nenets Okrug in the Iskateley work settlement, at first he was a deputy head, in recent years he worked his way up to a low-level post in the township and since the summer of last year he’s been retired. The case [maintains] that he, as part of the housing commission, recommended that the head of the township allocate an apartment to a woman according to a social housing contract. It later turned out that this family was already receiving a housing subsidy. The contract was terminated [and] the administration got the apartment back through the court.”

On Friday, March 26, Yuri Zhdanov was arrested in the city of Rostov-on-Don and his home was searched. The next day, a court remanded him in custody. According to his son’s Facebook post, Yuri Zhdanov is believed to be in Rostov-on-Don’s Pre-trial Detention Center No. 5 (SIZO-5).

Zhdanov junior blamed the Kremlin for his father’s arrest, calling the case an “entirely new level of baseness and meanness for the presidential administration.” “I won’t hide it, for me this is the worst thing that could happen,” he wrote.

“There are no doubts that this felony [charge] is linked to me and what I do,” Ivan Zhdanov underscored.