Police in Yaroslavl filed lawsuits against Navalny's former chief of staff over the January 31 protests

The Department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for the Yaroslavl region filed two lawsuits against the former head of Navalny’s local headquarters, Alexander Smirnov, he announced this on his Facebook. The police want to collect from him 587,108 rubles for wages for security forces and 59,536 rubles for gasoline.

Smirnov spoke about the details of the claim: on January 31, 2021, the police allegedly allocated more than 200 employees and 50 vehicles to disperse the protest, which traveled more than five thousand kilometers and spent more than a thousand liters of gasoline. According to OVD-Info, at least 70 people were detained in Yaroslavl that day.

The police filed a lawsuit in the Tutaevsky City Court, the hearing is scheduled for August 3. The activist is assisted by Apology of Protest lawyer Alexey Glukhov.

Smirnov, in a commentary to OVD-Info, added that the police are demanding compensation from him, since because of the protests on January 31, a protocol was drawn up against him for organizing an uncoordinated action (Part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Administrative Code).

Earlier, because of the rally on January 23, police in the Yaroslavl region filed a lawsuit against another former headquarters coordinator, Elena Lekiashvili.

• After the arrest of politician Alexei Navalny, a series of protests took place throughout Russia; mass rallies took place on Saturday, January 23, Sunday, January 31, and February 2 (the day Navalny’s suspended sentence was replaced with a real one). Security forces reacted harshly to the protests: on January 23, more than 4,000 people were detained, on January 31, more than 5,500 , and on February 2, more than 1,400 people .
• In connection with the rallies in support of Alexei Navalny, which took place from January 23 to February 2, at least 90 criminal cases were opened across the country. Protest participants were accused of using violence against security forces (Article 318 of the Criminal Code), violating sanitary and epidemiological rules (Part 1 of Article 236 of the Criminal Code), involving minors in illegal activities (Part 2 of Article 151.2 of the Criminal Code), blocking roads (Article 267 CC). The totality of these cases is called the “palace case,” since one of the catalysts for the protests was the FBK investigative film “ Palace for Putin. The story of the biggest bribe ."