The coordinator of Aleksey Navalny's headquarters in Belgorod Evgeny Karpov announced its shutdown. On March 30, he held the last official congress of Alexey Navalny's partisans in Belgorod.
As the coordinator explained to the “7x7” journal, the headquarters is being shut down, because the presidential elections have passed, and the party that was announced to be created by Aleksey Navalny, has not yet appeared.
"The partisan congresses on establishing the party have been sabotaged. I believe that large funds are required to organize a new congress and for other organizational issues. Yet, if the party is registered, then, perhaps, the headquarters will be opened again. Meanwhile, several volunteers decided to organize a “people's headquarters” and continue their work. They can take part in elections at the regional level through self-nomination, and also involve new partisans of Aleksey Navalny to our work. By the way, even if the party is registered, so far the candidates can participate in elections only through self-nomination, since the party can nominate staff members only a year after the registration”, said Evgeny Karpov.
Aleksey Navalny's headquarters in Belgorod was opened on August 2, 2017. Since Navalny was not allowed to participate in the presidential elections in Russia, his partisans performed as poll watchers for officially registered candidates and parties. The headquarters trained and sent in the field more than a hundred poll watchers to the stations in the city and the region. Another hundred Aleksey Navalny's partisans from Belgorod monitored voting improprieties through web cameras streaming from the polling stations.
Aleksey Navalny planned to register the Party of the Progress. The former assistant of the leader of Moscow headquarters Vitaly Serukanov, on February 22, filed to the Ministry of Justice the documents for the registration of a party with the same name.
On March 3, 2018 the congress of the Party of Progress was supposed to take place, that was necessary for the official registration of the organization established by Aleksey Navalny. Delegates from different cities of Russia came to the congress, but it did not take place. Aleksey Navalny said that the premise owner refused to provide a room for it.
