The move by a Moscow court would mean that supporters of the opposition are no longer allowed to vote.
Top politicians are horrified.
Moscow - The alleged Navalny perpetrators were also targeting a writer critical of the Kremlin: Dmitri Bykov could also have been the victim of a poison attack in 2019.
This is what the investigative platforms
The Insider
and
Bellingcat
report
on Wednesday.
According to the reports, several agents of the Russian domestic secret service FSB had already started to shadow Bykov in 2018.
The journalists refer to the men's travel data.
The Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny blames President Vladimir Putin and the FSB for the poison attack on themselves in 2020, which they reject.
Investigative journalists, on the other hand, have repeatedly reported attacks on Russian opposition members in recent months
Navalny spokeswoman: "Our country is ruled by people who kill their fellow citizens"
Bykov, who among other things
writes
as a columnist for the government-critical newspaper
Novaya Gazeta
, collapsed on board an airplane more than two years ago and was then in a coma for several days. At the time, the doctors did not determine a final reason for the collapse of the 53-year-old. The journalists now emphasized that Bykov's first symptoms - vomiting and sweating - resembled those of Navalny's.
Nawalny's spokeswoman Kira Jarmysch was appalled by the research results: "It literally freezes your blood," she wrote on Twitter.
“Our country is ruled by people who kill their fellow citizens.” Anyone who thinks differently could become a victim of such an attack in Russia - “whether opposition politician or poet”.
Navalny has been detained in a prison camp for months.
+
Putin critic Alexej Navalny in autumn 2020 after being poisoned in Berlin.
© AFP PHOTO / Instagram account @navalny / handout
US government and EU condemn ban on navalny organizations
In addition, a Moscow court classified Navalny's regional support network and his anti-corruption foundation as “extremist” on Wednesday and banned them with immediate effect. A law recently came into force in Russia banning members of organizations classified as “extremist” from voting.
The US and the EU responded immediately to the ban. "With this measure, Russia has effectively criminalized one of the few remaining independent political movements in the country," said US State Department spokesman Ned Price. The administration of US President Joe Biden called on Russia to end the designation of nonviolent organizations as "extremist", to stop suppressing Navalny and his supporters and to fulfill international obligations to respect and guarantee human rights and fundamental freedoms.
The EU foreign policy representative Josep Borrell made a similar statement on behalf of the member states on Thursday.
The move has no basis and is "the most serious attempt by the Russian government to date to suppress the independent political opposition and anti-corruption investigations," he said.
The aim is to "eliminate" the influence of Nawalny's network before the State Duma elections in September.
(dpa / frs)
List of rubric lists: © AFP PHOTO / Instagram account @navalny / handout
