The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia for the Sverdlovsk Region filed a lawsuit against the former head of Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Roizman, and four other residents of the region to recover 565,000 rubles for police work for actions in support of politician Alexei Navalny in 2021. This is reported by the publication "Vecherniye Vedomosti".
The substantiation of the claim states that on January 31, the Ministry of Internal Affairs deployed 1,527 employees to “ensure public security”, “and vehicles were additionally used.” As a result, the police were paid 499,223 rubles for their work on the shares, and another 65,918 rubles were spent on “fuel and lubricants,” the lawsuit says.
Roizman said that he learned about the lawsuit from journalists and noted that "the police must ensure order and security of citizens in the exercise of their constitutional rights – in this case, the right to freedom of assembly," the politician commented on the situation.
As defendants, in addition to Roizman, the former coordinator of Navalny's Headquarters in Yekaterinburg, Irina Norman, ex-employee of the headquarters Victoria Reich, Kirill Serebrennikov, a Magnit cashier from the closed military settlement of Uralsky, and Yuri Chechenev from Yekaterinburg, are listed.
All were previously held liable under part 2 of Article 20.2 of the Code of Administrative Offenses for posts on social networks about rallies in support of Navalny. The courts of Yekaterinburg found them guilty of organizing a procession that was not coordinated with the authorities. The publication notes that some of the defendants are not familiar with each other, which did not prevent the courts from recognizing them as the organizers of the same event.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs has previously filed similar lawsuits against activists from different cities, including Kemerovo, St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Ufa, Omsk and Chelyabinsk.
On January 23 and 31, as well as on February 2, 2021, actions were held throughout Russia in support of the arrested opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The authorities immediately responded to the protests with open and large-scale repression, including searches and mass administrative arrests. In total, more than 11 thousand people were detained in connection with actions in support of Navalny. In Moscow alone, more than 1,250 people were subjected to administrative arrest in a month for taking part in the protests. Also, about 90 criminal cases were initiated: on attacks on security forces, hooliganism, damage to property, blocking roads, violating sanitary and epidemiological rules and involving minors in illegal actions.
