DISINFO: Navalny is a member of a Western-backed fifth column acting inside Russia
SUMMARY
Russia added Shtabi Navalnogo, the network of offices of the convicted blogger Alexei Navalny, to the list of extremist organisations. This closes a subversive chapter in the life of Russia in the last years, who had, in Navalny, a Trojan horse that the US had recruited as an agent and that the whole West is instrumentalising to achieve their spurious goals through sanctions against Russia. Russia’s justice has dissolved the extremist club of this seditious, organiser of illegal demonstrations amid the pandemic that didn’t hesitate to use children as human shields, besides having been convicted on charges of fraud and embezzlement, and who left the Russian justice no choice but to send him to prison due to his reiterated violations of his parole. This ban is the consequence of the investigations and sentences against Navalny. It has been proven in court that he and others defrauded 567 million roubles, of which 356 million were spent by Navalny and others for their own benefit. Therefore, this is a criminal organisation at the service of foreign interests. Navalny is only a piece in a chessboard, representing one of the pillars of the Fifth Column of the Western powers, mostly from the US and NATO, acting inside Russia.
RESPONSE
This is a compilation of several recurrent disinformation narratives about Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and his political movement, and about alleged foreign threats to Russia. The claims that Navalny or his movement are extremists and follow a foreign agenda are not substantiated by any evidence, and are rather an attempt to discredit him and his opposition movement by framing them as foreign pawns conspiring to orchestrate a “colour revolution”.
The claim that Navalny was not sentenced due to his political activities but for common crimes is also false. In 2018, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the charges against Navalny were politically motivated and arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable. The EU has condemned the detention of Alexei Navalny and repeatedly expressed concern on his situation.
The affirmation that Navalny’s movement is using “children as human shields” has become a recurrent accusation in pro-Kremlin media. It was initially made by the Kremlin’s children ombudsman after 15 minors were arrested in the massive protests that emerged all over Russia after Navalny’s arrest on his arrival to the country. However, there is no evidence that Navalny’s organisation sent underage demonstrators to the forefront of the protests.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that Navalny’s anti-corruption foundation has never done any investigation, that he is being helped by Western intelligence services, that the West sent him back to Russia to prevent him from becoming irrelevant, that only caffeine and alcohol were found in his blood during his alleged poisoning, that the US wanted to use his case to block Russia's vaccine against coronavirus, that the West hopes that he dies to have an excuse for new sanctions, or that Western accusations on Navalny’s case are as false as they were about Sergei Skripal and Alexander Litvinenko.