The coordinator of Russian opposition politician Aleksei Navalny’s presidential election campaign staff in the Siberian city of Barnaul has been detained.
The chairwoman of the Barnaul branch of the Party of Progress, Olga Fotiyeva, wrote on Facebook on August 9 that Artyom Kosaretsky was charged with disobedience to police and could be fined or jailed for several days.
Fotiyeva posted a police document detailing the charge, which says that Kosaretsky refused to accept a written warning from a police officer on "prevention of extremism" during a public gathering allowed by the city authorities on July 27.
Dozens of Navalny campaign workers have been detained or questioned in Moscow and other cities in recent weeks.
Navalny is campaigning for the March 2018 presidential election, in which President Vladimir Putin is widely expected to seek and win a fourth term.
Russian election authorities have said that Navalny will be barred from the ballot because of a financial-crimes conviction that he says was engineered by the Kremlin to punish him for his opposition activity and keep him out of electoral politics.
