An amazingly courageous young politician from Russia, who fought for many political goals that I would wholeheartedly also support.
The former head of Navalny’s Tomsk headquarters was sentenced to nine years in prison in December of 2023. May those who contributed to this injustice burn in hell. The Russian justice court found Ksenia Fadeeva guilty of “creating an extremist community using her official position” and “participating in a non-profit organization that infringes on the rights of citizens.”
In 2017, Ksenia Fadeeva was the coordinator of Navalny’s headquarters during his presidential campaign, and in 2020 Fadeeva became a deputy of the Tomsk City Duma. Read more about Ksenia here.
At the end of the page the two lawyers who defended Ksenia report on how justice was kicked with the feet in this trial. Shame.
This photo shows her during the trial – facing a merciless executive system.
On December 29, a Russian court handed down a nine-year prison sentence to Russian politician Ksenia Fadeyeva, the former head of opposition figure Alexey Navalny’s regional office in the city of Tomsk. The court found the 31-year-old guilty of organizing an “extremist” group for her involvement with Navalny’s organization. Fadeyeva was one of a small number of Navalny associates who chose to remain in Russia after his movement was declared “extremist.”
Background
Before she began working with Alexey Navalny, Ksenia Fadeyeva was a regional coordinator for the independent voter protection movement Golos in her hometown of Tomsk. She was also a prominent activist in the Siberian city; in 2015, for example, she staged a picket protest in support of a local independent TV station that found itself in the government’s crosshairs.
In 2017, Fadeyeva became the deputy head of Navalny’s Tomsk campaign headquarters for his planned 2018 presidential run. Later, she became the head of the regional office.
Shortly before the office began operating, unknown assailants sealed the door of Fadeyeva’s apartment shut with construction foam and damaged her car. Afterwards, she was repeatedly fined and arrested for organizing “unauthorized” protests.
Navalny was ultimately barred from joining the 2018 presidential election. Even after the vote, however, many of his regional offices, including the one in Tomsk, continued operating, devoting their efforts to investigating local corruption and regional civic issues.
In August 2020, Navalny traveled to Novosibirsk and Tomsk to help his associates film documentaries about their investigations and to support independent political candidates. One of these candidates was Ksenia Fadeyeva, who was running for the Tomsk City Duma as an independent.
On August 20, Alexey Navalny began feeling ill while on a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, where Navalny was hospitalized. It later became clear that Navalny had been poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.
Three weeks later, Fadeyeva beat her opponents from the ruling United Russia party and became a deputy in the Tomsk City Duma. She was supported by the Navalny team’s Smart Vote initiative, in which they used data to advise voters on which non-United Russia candidates would be most likely to win. Andrey Fateyev, another Navalny associate, was also elected to the Tomsk parliament, while the United Russia deputies found themselves in the minority.
Translation:
Friends, we won 🙂
Thank you all for your support.
I won 7 out of 9 sites.
Andrey also defeated his competitor Panasyuk, the hero of the Tomsk investigation Alexei Navalny.
I think you understand how important it was to win after everything that happened in Tomsk.
Fadeyeva cited two main factors for the Navalny movement’s victory in Tomsk: a high voter turnout in response to the politician’s poisoning, and the release of the Navalny team’s documentary “Tomsk held hostage by the deputies’ mafia,” which featured Navalny himself.
In June 2021, a Moscow court declared Navalny’s offices an “extremist movement.” Following the ruling, the politicians regional headquarters across the country began closing, and their employees began leaving the country. At the same time, the Russian authorities began opening felony cases against Navalny’s associates for their participation in his anti-corruption work.
Leonid Volkov, the former head of Navalny’s organization, said that at this point, he and his colleagues offered to provide “any assistance” that would help Navalny’s regional coordinators get out of the country. But Ksenia Fadeyeva, he said, refused outright. “She wrote to me that she’s scared but that she’s a deputy, and she has voters to think about, she has a district, she has a responsibility — she can’t abandon her voters and her work in the Tomsk City Duma,” Volkov said.
In late December 2021, the Russian authorities searched Fadeyeva’s home in connection with “extremism” charges. Soon after, a court banned her from using the Internet, communicating with anyone besides her relatives and lawyers, and attending public events.
The court began considering the case against Fadeyeva in August 2023. The proceedings were held behind closed doors. In November, she was put on house arrest, and shortly after she was sent to a pre-trial detention facility.
Investigators allege that Fadeyeva continued participating in Navalny’s movement even after it was declared “extremist.” The independent outlet Mediazona noted that the witnesses called by the prosecution did not live in Tomsk, and that some of them did not even know Fadeyeva.
The prosecution was given nearly four months to make its case; the defense was given four days. When the defense was presenting its arguments, the judge scheduled each day to last 12 hours and did not allow Fadeyeva to eat or take breaks. At one point, an ambulance had to be called for Fadeyeva when she began feeling ill.
On December 28, prosecutors requested that Fadeyeva be sentenced to 10.5 years in prison. The following day, the court sentenced her to nine years in prison and a 500,000-ruble ($5,555) fine.
“Ksenia Fadeyeva is one of the best, most honest people I know. Those who jailed her will burn in hell,” Leonid Volkov wrote on social media.
SOTAvision correspondent reports from the courtroom
Fadeeva’s case, which contained more than 90 volumes, had been considered since mid-August. In October, the court closed the trial to listeners and the media. In November, Fadeeva was sent from house arrest to a pre-trial detention center. And in December, in the telegram channel of the deputy’s support group, they reported that the hearings in her case lasted 12 hours without a break, which is why the defendant even had to call an ambulance once.
“What happened in this trial has nothing to do with justice,” lawyers Semyon Vodnev and Kirill Terekhin about the sentence of 9 years in prison for Tomsk City Duma deputy and ex-head of Navalny’s Tomsk headquarters Ksenia Fadeeva.
A justice system in service if the current Russian authorities shows the entire country how high the price of political dissent has become. As the lawyers state at one moment in the above account: “If I say more I will likely become a neighbor for Ksenia and I am not yet ready for this.”
Another person involved in the case, City Duma deputy Andrei Fateev and former colleague of Ksenia in the ACF, left Russia.