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Russian authorities have arrested a prominent opposition activist after he was taken off a flight he did it against several other houses.
Andrei Pivovarov, head of the Open Russia movement, was taken off a plane bound for Warsaw at St. Petersburg airport before being picked up late Monday.
Pivovarov’s team said police questioned him, searched his apartment and opened a criminal case against him on Tuesday for allegedly violating Russian law on “unwanted organizations.”
“These situations show us that we are afraid, and that we are the majority,” Pivovarov’s Twitter account said.
The Krasnodar branch of the Commission of Inquiry, which examines important cases, said in a statement that Pivovarov had published in August 2020 materials in favor of an “unwanted organization.”
The document also accused the activist of trying to escape from investigators on Monday.
Pivovarov said he would go on vacation when he was arrested.
‘Unusual action’
Pivovarov was taken off the plane on May 23 when a Belanair flight from Belarus to Lithuania was diverted by the Belarusian authorities to the capital Minsk and arrested a journalist.
The Polish airline LOT, which operated the Pivovarov flight, said the plane was traveling by taxi when Russian air traffic control ordered the crew to return to the parking lot.
“The pilot had to comply with the order because it was under Russian jurisdiction,” the Polish news agency PAP said in a statement.
Poland said it was looking into the matter.
“It is an unusual act, because if the Russians wanted to arrest that person, they could have done it before the rise. The question is why it was done exactly at that moment,” Foreign Minister Piotr Wawrzyk told state television TVP.
“The standards of the civilized world do not apply there.”
Open Russia is labeled as “desirable”
Open Russia was funded by tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who went to London after 10 years in prison in Russia for defying the rule of President Vladimir Putin for what he saw as political revenge.
Russia said the group was “desirable” in 2017, and effectively banned its activities.
His Russian allies continued their activism under a separate legal entity in an attempt to protect him from trial.
But the group slammed Russia’s activities last week as it prepares to pass legislation that would increase criminal responsibility for those who work with parliament to “prevent unwanted organizations” to prevent criminal trials.
Russia says the law is necessary to protect its national security from external interference.
Police raids
Police also searched the home of opposition politician Dmitry Gudkov on Tuesday, a former lawmaker who plans to run for parliament in September.
They searched at least two of his partners ’homes.
“I don’t know the formal reason for that,” Gudkov wrote on the social media platform Telegram. “But the real (reason) is clear.”
Gudkov’s father Gennady, also a critic of the Kremlin, said the searches were “a special operation to eliminate Gudkov’s group.”
Authorities have not yet commented on Gudkov’s ongoing operation.
Repression against dissent
The move comes as Russia seems to be repressing political opposition ahead of the September parliamentary elections.
Putin’s United Russia party has lost support recently because economic problems are weighing on it.
The president’s main political enemy, Alexey Navalny, was arrested in January on his return from Germany and spent five months recovering from the poisoning of a nervous agent he accuses the Kremlin of – accusations dismissed by Russian officials.
He is serving a two-and-a-half-year prison sentence for a 2014 unjust conviction that he accuses of being politically motivated.
While Navalny is in prison, the prosecutor has asked a Moscow court to name the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and its network of regional offices as an “extreme” group.
In a parallel move, bills approved by the lower house of the Russian parliament are starting to seek public office for bar members, donors and supporters of “extremist” groups – a measure that would prevent Navalny members from running for parliament in September.
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