The Altai Regional Court upheld the sentence of Vadim Ostanin, former coordinator of Navalny's headquarters in Barnaul. Information about this is available on the court's website.
At the end of July, Ostanin was sentenced to nine years in a general regime penal colony under articles on organizing an extremist community (Part 1 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code) and on participating in a non-profit organization that infringes on the personality and rights of citizens (Part 3 of Article 239 of the Criminal Code).
The man told the Sirena Telegram channel about his persecution: "I am being prosecuted essentially because I worked as a coordinator for Navalny's headquarters even before the headquarters and the FBK were recognized as extremist organizations. In addition, the investigation believes that I continued to work in Navalny's team, allegedly in a conspiratorial manner. However, there is no evidence of this in the case."
As part of the criminal case, Ostanin was detained at the end of 2021. At that time, he was given a preventive measure in the form of a ban on certain actions, but in March 2022, the man was taken into custody. The investigation accused him of attempting to escape, Mediazona wrote .
At the end of March this year, Ostanin spoke about the pressure of the investigation and the deterioration of his health due to the conditions in the pretrial detention center No. 1 in the Altai region, which he called torture. The man spent a long time in a punishment cell - a basement with a window covered with garbage, without hot water and a place to sleep. The cell was flooded once, and he had to share it with rats, spiders and ants, Ostanin said.
In April, the man told his comrades that his medications, personal hygiene items, and books had been taken away from him in the pretrial detention center. According to him, Ostanin was repeatedly denied medications, which caused his health to deteriorate.
- On June 9, 2021, the Moscow City Court recognized the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the Citizens' Rights Defense Foundation (CRDF), and Alexei Navalny's headquarters as extremist organizations. The appeals court later upheld this decision. After that, supporters of the opposition politician began leaving Russia en masse.
- At the end of September 2021, the Investigative Committee reported that a case on an extremist community (Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code) had been opened against Navalny and his associates, as well as other activists. It later became known that several more cases, previously opened against the politician and several key figures in his structures, had been added to this case. Currently, within the framework of one case, in addition to the article on an extremist community, there are also articles on the financing of extremist activity (Part 1 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code), on the legalization of funds acquired by other persons by criminal means (subparagraph "b" of Part 4 of Article 174 of the Criminal Code), on the creation of a non-profit organization that infringes on the personality and rights of citizens (Part 2 of Article 239 of the Criminal Code) and on the involvement of minors in dangerous activities (subparagraphs "a", "c" of Part 2 of Article 151.2 of the Criminal Code). In August 2023, Navalny was sentenced to 19 years in a special regime penal colony under articles on financing extremism (Part 2 of Article 282.3 of the Criminal Code), on the creation of an extremist community (Part 3 of Article 282.1 of the Criminal Code), and on calls for extremism (Part 2 of Article 280 of the Criminal Code).
- In January, as part of the case of the extremist community, former employees of Navalny's headquarters in Arkhangelsk Yegor Butakov and Elizaveta Bychkova were sentenced to one year of restricted freedom. In June of the year, former coordinator of Navalny's Ufa headquarters Liliya Chanysheva was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison, and in July, the former coordinator of the headquarters in Barnaul Vadim Ostanin was sentenced to nine years in a general regime penal colony. In August, former technical director of Navalny LIVE Daniel Kholodny was sentenced to eight years in a general regime penal colony. In October 2022, a volunteer of this headquarters Olga Shkolina was arrested in absentia - she left the country in the summer. In addition, in December of the same year, former coordinator of Navalny's Irkutsk headquarters Zakhar Sarapulov was given a year of suspended imprisonment. The former coordinator of the Tomsk headquarters, Ksenia Fadeeva, is under a ban on certain actions.