Moscow:
Russia’s media regulator has blocked 49 web-sites linked to jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, his ally mentioned Monday, as stress mounts on the movement of the opposition leader ahead of parliamentary elections in the autumn.
Navalny, President Vladimir Putin’s most vocal domestic critic, was arrested in January following he returned to Russia following months of therapy in Germany for a nerve agent poisoning he blames on the Kremlin.
He was subsequently jailed for two-and-a-half years on old fraud charges and his organisations have been banned as “extremist”, barring members and sponsors from operating in parliamentary elections in September.
“By the decision of the prosecutor general’s office, 49 websites were blocked simultaneously,” important Navalny aide Leonid Volkov mentioned on his Telegram channel on Monday.
The blocked web-sites involve Navalny’s primary site, the site of his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the web-sites of important allies and of Navalny’s regional offices that disbanded earlier this year.
AFP journalists mentioned Navalny’s site was unavailable in Russia.
“The night of the long knives,” Volkov wrote in reference to a bloody purge of military and political rivals launched by Adolf Hitler in Germany.
Volkov mentioned the only site that was not blocked by the state censor was “Smart Voting”, which is devoted to a Navalny-proposed tactic to back candidates finest placed to defeat Kremlin-linked politicians in elections.
This tactic has seen the ruling United Russia party shed a quantity of seats in current neighborhood elections.
AFP has reached out to the Roskomnadzor media watchdog for comment.
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