Roman Rubanov, the director of Alexei Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, says federal agents have occupied the group’s office in Moscow, which police evacuated three days ago, following an alleged bomb threat.
Rubanov told the news site Meduza that agents from the Federal Security Service, Russia’s post-Soviet KGB successor, were spotted presenting their identity badges to gain access to the business center that houses the Anti-Corruption Foundation’s office.
This Sunday, as political protests swept cities across Russia, Moscow police raided Navalny’s office, ordering everyone inside to leave the building, following an alleged bomb threat. Many staff and volunteers refused to obey the police, and were later arrested and sentenced to several days in jail.
Critics say the police were trying to stop Navalny’s group from live-streaming footage from the nationwide demonstrations, which the Anti-Corruption Foundation also helped organize.
Law enforcement officers and a group of men in civilian clothes later removed the foundation’s computers and other technical equipment. Rubanov and his colleagues say they’ve been given no explanation for these seizures, and the men who took the equipment refused to identify themselves to the journalists and activists who filmed them in the act.
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