The crowd at Alexei Navalny’s rally in Tambov. Photo by Evgeny Feldman from https://navalny.feldman.photo/

By Sarah Hurst

Campaigners for Alexei Navalny in Tambov, south of Moscow, are paying the price for organising his successful rally last Sunday. The coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters in the city, Diana Rudakova, has been jailed for seven days. Deputy coordinator Leonid Yarygin has been jailed for 25 days, assistant coordinator Igor Slivin for 20 days and volunteer Margarita Zaitseva for five days.

Navalny posted the news on his Facebook page with the comment, “Just so you know what the campaign of an independent candidate in Russia is… But our Tambov headquarters continues to work. That’s how it is. (Join us, we’re on the good side.)”

A policeman also visited Navalny’s new headquarters in Moscow this morning, telling deputy coordinator Vitaly Serukanov that he wanted to “get acquainted”. No one was detained and volunteers continued collecting and checking signatures that are needed to officially register Navalny as a presidential candidate (although he is banned from running because of a fabricated criminal case).