"We as a team are not surprised," wrote Ivan Zhdanov, the exiled head of Alexei Navalnyj's Foundation for the Fight against Corruption (FBK) on social media.

And further: "That we are not surprised means that we are ready." What he alluded to on Monday was the blocking of more than forty websites by the Roskomnadzor media regulator on the decision of the General Prosecutor's Office in Moscow.

Sofia Dreisbach

Editor in politics.

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These include the websites of the Russian opposition leader, his organization and other projects such as a doctors' union, which had drawn attention to grievances in the corona pandemic.

They are supposed to promote "prohibited extremist activities".

In June, the FBK and its regional representatives, known as the “staffs”, had been declared “extremist” by a Moscow court - since then, the next step has been taken, wrote Zhdanov.

"Calls for mass unrest"

But on Tuesday Roskomnadzor tightened the thumbscrews even further. The media supervisory authority requested that YouTube should block the channel of Leonid Volkov, the right-hand man of Navalnyj, who lives in exile in Lithuania, among other things. Volkov, who has 124,000 subscribers, published the YouTube email on Twitter, to which the corresponding request from the media regulator is attached. It stated that the channel allegedly contained "calls for mass unrest and the conduct of extremist activities". He also called for participation in unauthorized mass events and distributed "information material from organizations recognized as undesirable". The Youtube channels of Navalnyj employees Georgij Alburow (1,400 subscribers) and Vladimir Milow (248,000 subscribers) are also to be blocked.

For Navalnyj, who has been imprisoned since January, and his allies in the fight against corruption, YouTube is one of the most important platforms for reaching the public. The most successful video on Navalnyj's Channel about "Putin's Palace" - a luxury property on the Black Sea attributed to the Russian President - has received almost 118 million views since it was published in January. So often that Putin himself felt compelled to deny a personal connection to the property. Almost six and a half million people have subscribed to the opposition leader's posts on Youtube. The latest video from last Thursday was about the chairman of the lower house, Vyacheslav Volodin, who is said to have made trips on the plane of the presidential administration at the expense of taxpayers.

Before the Duma election in September, the opposition came under increasing pressure. It was announced on Tuesday that Irina Fatyanova, formerly head of the FBK regional office in Saint Petersburg and an independent candidate for the Petersburg city parliament, was excluded from the elections - according to Fatyanova's campaign manager, because she worked for Navalnyj's organization. Fatyanova, however, was determined on Twitter on Tuesday: “Damn it, I'll never give up! And neither does my team! ”There is no legal basis for this decision, she will fight back and submit the required signatures. "If someone thinks that I am leaving now and will not regain my right to participate in the elections, they are very wrong."

This is one of the reasons why Navalnyj once again advertised his “Smart Voting” project on social media on Tuesday, the website of which will soon be blocked. That's why the Russians should download the app for this "interesting experiment". The plan is to vote for the strongest opponent of the ruling party, United Russia, in each district. On Instagram, Navalnyj wrote in his appeal about the blocking of the Internet pages: "I think Putin's thieves are overestimating their options here."