In Samara, the court recovered more than 400 thousand rubles from the organizers of the rallies for the release of Navalny

The Zheleznodorozhny District Court of Samara exacted 436,000 rubles from Samara activists. in favor of the regional Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs for organizing uncoordinated rallies in support of Alexei Navalny on January 23 and 31, 2021. The police demanded compensation for “carrying out official duties in excess of the established normal duty hours.”

The defendants are Marina Evdokimova, Mikhail Nikolaev, Viktor Sanzhenakov, Vadim Sheremetiev, Sergei Podsytnik, Yegor Alasheev, Ilya Yudin. In January last year, they were all arrested and sentenced in administrative cases to 5-10 days in prison. A total of 160 detainees were reported in the city.

As noted by Mikhail Matveev, a deputy of the Samara Provincial Duma from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (now a deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation), the action that took place on January 23 became one of the most massive protest actions in Samara “along with a rally against raising the retirement age in 2018.” According to police, the rally gathered 950 people. Mikhail Matveev estimated the number of protesters at 3,000–5,000.

As Marina Evdokimova, who is now abroad, told Kommersant, she does not intend to pay: “In such a situation, I consider it especially unacceptable to pay for the work of Russian security forces who support the Putin regime and use force to disperse opposition rallies to the current government.”

Sabrina Samedova, Samara