He had reported just a few hours before the kidnapping of the young Russian activist Ruslan Shaveddinov, his close associate taken from the army in Moscow, enlisted by force and taken to military service in a remote arctic base. In the aftermath of his blog post, Alexei Navalny was arrested and released after a few hours.
Yesterday the leader of the Russian opposition had spread the news of the phone call received by Ruslan Shaveddinov, 23 years old, project manager at the Navalny anti-corruption foundation who disappeared last Monday, after being picked up by the police from his apartment in Moscow, the Sim card of his phone disabled. Yesterday he resurfaced in a secret air defense base on the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago, in the Arctic Ocean: He was illegally deprived of his freedom, he is a political prisoner, denounced the main opponent of President Vladimir Putin on his blog. Shaveddinov told him that he had been kidnapped by a particular army unit based in Rogachovo, in the Novaja Zemlja archipelago, which separates the Barents and Kara seas, once used by the Soviet Union to conduct nuclear tests.
His supporters spoke of kidnapping, while the army claims that the young man was a deserter. According to Navalny, Shaveddinov had all the documents that exempted him from military service for health reasons, a version that the Russian army however contested.