Russia's court orders Alexei Navalny's anti-corruption foundation to suspend activities

Russian prosecutors on April 26 ordered jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and its regional network to suspend all their activities. While taking to Twitter, FBK shared screenshots of a prosecutor’s decision and said that the court has “suspended the work of FBK and Navalny’s headquarters pending the court’s decision”. According to EuroNews, a preliminary hearing now has been scheduled for April 29, FBK director Ivan Zhdanov said. 

The Moscow City Court confirmed that the activities of the group’s regional network were suspended. However, they also clarified that prosecutors had the power to make the decision and said that a final court ruling on designating the group as “extremist” was still due. In a series of social media posts, Ivan said that the prosecutors are going to destroy Navalny’s team in secret, without drawing attention to it, and the case has been classified. 

He said that with the decision the authorities “are just shouting here: we are afraid of your activities, we are afraid of your rallies, we are afraid of smart voting”. 

Navalny ends hunger strike 

Meanwhile, Navalny is currently serving a two-and-a-half-year jail sentence in a penal colony for violating the terms of his probation over an earlier conviction for embezzlement while he was recovering from a nerve agent attack in Germany. Navalny was arrested in January upon landing in Russia following his five-month convalescence in a Berlin hospital. Mass rallies calling for his release were held across Russia, following a warning from his medical team that he “could die at any minute”. 

On March 31, Navalny went on a hunger strike to demand proper medical treatment for back pain and numbness in his legs and hands. He ended his hunger strike on Friday and said that he had started “losing sensitivity” in his hands and legs and that “given circumstances” it was best to resume eating. He even stressed that he had been examined twice in the days preceding the rallies but that he was still unable to see his personal doctors. 

(Image: AP)