Julia Galjamina, Naval’ny's heir, arrested

The police interrupted a pre-election congress citing anti-Covid "health" reasons. Congress was to build electoral alliances to counter Putin's United Russia party. In mid-March, another Forum was blocked in Moscow. The "territory vote" to aid the "smart vote" of Naval'nyj supporters. But the authorities seem to want to stifle any opposition.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Yesterday May 25, the Moscow deputy Julia Galjamina was officially placed under arrest (for a week), for disobeying the provisions of the police, as she herself communicated through her Telegram channel.

Galjamina (see photo) was the main inspiration behind the congress held on May 22-23 in the city of Novgorod, 200 km south of St. Petersburg. The gathering called Zemskij Sezd ("Congress of Lands"), was aimed above all at municipal deputies from various Russian cities, with the intention of creating a possible electoral alliance in view of the autumn elections.

As soon as the rally began, numerous police officers arrived, blocking all activities on charges of infringing anti-Covid regulations and detaining several participants.

In addition to Galjamina, other participants sanctioned included: Jurij Bondarčuk, deputy from Nojabrsk in the autonomous region of Yamalo-Nenets (central-northern Siberia), held for 80 hours; Vitalij Bovar, deputy from St. Petersburg; Viktor Šaljakin, of the liberal Yabloko party in Novgorod itself. The latter was fined. In Novgorod, deputies from 56 of the 90 regions of the Russian Federation were supposed to meet. In all, 170 people were arrested by the police. It should be remembered that in mid-March the “Municipal Russia” Forum was blocked in Moscow.

The new alliance of the opposition to the Putin regime refers to the formula of Zemskij Sobor, the "Council of the Lands" which at the beginning of the 17th century had allowed Russia to leave the so-called period of the "Troubles", of internal struggles between the families of boyars and the invasions of the Poles, with the choice of relying on the new dynasty of the tsars of the Romanov family.

The Council was attended by members of the aristocracy, clergy, merchants and even farmers, and it has remained an ideal to be imitated even for post-communist Russia, as the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn suggested in a famous speech at the Moscow Duma, on his return after years of exile in America.

The project of Galjamina and the other municipal deputies is to launch an appeal to the zemskoe golosovanie, the "vote of the territories", as a more effective variant of the "useful vote" invented by Naval’nyj in recent years. The choice of candidates is based on the experience of local municipal councils, and allow them to circumvent the many prohibitions that are piling up against the "naval‘nyi candidates", whom authorities are attempting to stifle.

The candidates of Zemskij Sezd will be chosen by an organizing committee, excluding members of the Putinian party United Russia from the start outset. Each of them will be asked to record a video in which they undertake to support the "territories" program, and to present themselves with the support of two deputies who are members of the Section by 21 September 2021.

A SEZD delegate, Olga Podolskaja from Tula (not far from Moscow) explained to Nezavisimaja Gazeta that candidates will not be asked for "any declaration against Putin or against the government", but they will still have to oppose any form of political repression and support reforms of local administrations and of the political representation system.

The project does not replace the naval "smart vote", already well underway in many regions, but integrates it and guarantees it in the face of further restrictions, in a political climate that has become hot in recent months.

The recent "air hijacking" actions by Belarusian President Lukashenko, supported in Russia by those who welcome the demonstrations of force against dissidents considered "foreign agents", such as the young Belarusian blogger Roman Protasevič, are also of great concern. His sensational arrest with hijacking also risks blocking the transport of goods from Europe to Russia, if in addition to flights, land transport, which mostly passes through Belarus, is also blocked.

• russia
• economy
• religious freedom
• julia galjamina
• alexei navalnyj
• vladimir putin
• elections
• censorship
• repression
• belarus
• roman protasevic
• alexandr lukashenko