Makhinya: flats of five civil activists searched in Volgograd

Law enforcers of Volgograd have searched apartments of five civil society activists, said Leonid Makhinya, an activist of the regional branch of "The Other Russia".

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the FSB and the Centre for Combating Extremism had initiated home searches of Nikolai Cherniavsky, an activist of the "Left-Wing Front"; Oleg Denisov, a member of the movement "For Fair Elections"; and Ruslan Alekseev, an assistant State Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov. This was reported by their comrades.

According to Leonid Makhinya, law enforcers had also searched the homes of Alevtina Dupree, an activist of the "League of Voters"; and Mikhail Yassin-Panin, a member of the Ethno-Political Association (EPA) "Russians". "Yassin told me that at 7 a.m. he was visited by OMON (riot police) agents, who presented a search warrant, signed by the Basmanny Court of Moscow," Mr Makhinya told the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "Thus, the searches have touched on the entire spectrum of the non-systemic opposition."

Oleg Denisov from the movement "For Fair Elections" said that the search was conducted by the Investigatory Committee under the so-called "Bolotnaya case" (the riots during the "March of Millions" on May 6, 2012, in Bolotnaya Square in Moscow). He said that after the search, he was taken away for questioning; his interrogation passed "correctly"; he signed a non-disclosure agreement and was released.

The search of Mikhail Yassin-Panin's housing was also related to the "Bolotnaya case", said the Volgograd activist Anatoly Boltykhov in his explanation to the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent. "They confiscated nothing from Panin, except for a few files from his computer," he said. "This is yet another provocation, since Panin is an ideological opponent to Udaltsov. Apparently, the investigators have no sufficient data to imprison Udaltsov in Moscow; therefore, they move to the regions in their search."