In Penza, the police filed a lawsuit against the organizers of the action on January 23 for almost 890 thousand rubles

The Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Penza Region demanded 883,634 rubles from the organizers of the January 23 rally in support of Alexei Navalny for “additional payments to police officers who worked at the protest and spent gasoline.” The corresponding claim was received by the Pervomaisky District Court of the city, reports Apology of Protest.

The lawsuit was filed against the head of Navalny’s headquarters in Penza, Anton Strunin, and local resident Yuri Tsepaev. In the statement of claim, the Ministry of Internal Affairs calls them the organizers of the uncoordinated action on January 23.

After the publication of the announcement of this action, Anton Strunin was arrested for five days on charges of organizing an uncoordinated action (Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code). After the same announcement, Tsepaev was arrested for a day, the human rights organization clarifies. “The judicial acts that have entered into legal force confirm that Strunin and Tsepaev were the organizers of the uncoordinated action on January 23,” the police claim says.

In a conversation with Mediazona, Anton Strunin noted that Tsepaev does not cooperate with the local headquarters: “This is just a random person, who has never even been an activist, who simply reposted. The choice of him as a co-defendant is very surprising to me.”

• In connection with the detention of Alexei Navalny, a series of protests took place throughout Russia. The largest protests took place on Saturday, January 23, and Sunday, January 31. Security forces reacted harshly to the protests: on January 23, more than 4,000 people were detained, and on January 31, more than 5,500 . On the day the sentence in the Yves Rocher case was changed to a real one,arrests also took place near the Moscow City Court building and in the center of Moscow, including journalists.