Navalny's ally faces charges for ringing doorbell of alleged intelligence agent

Russian police have raided the home of a prominent opposition activist and hauled her in for questioning after the mother-in-law of an alleged intelligence agent pressed charges of trespassing.

Lyubov Sobol, who led massive opposition protests in Moscow last year, is arguably the most prominent opposition figure remaining in Russia as Alexei Navalny is still in Germany, convalescing after a nearly fatal nerve-agent poisoning.

Navalny, who spent several weeks in a coma after he fell suddenly ill on a plane in August, on Monday released an audio confession from Konstantin Kudryavtsev, one of the men allegedly behind the Novichok poisoning, following a sting operation in which he called the man up and posed as a senior intelligence official.

Hours after the recording was released in a huge embarrassment for Russia’s embattled intelligence community, Ms Sobol, 33, showed up at the man’s home just outside Moscow and rang his doorbell. She was detained shortly after that but later released.

Police in riot gear raided Ms Sobol’s home on Friday morning and hauled her in for questioning.

Russia’s top investigative unit that typically deals with high-profile crimes said in a statement on Friday that it has launched a criminal inquiry into suspected trespassing after an elderly woman  described as the agent’s mother-in-law pressed charges against the opposition activist.

The investigators allege that Ms Sobol, who was allegedly wearing a uniform of a public health officer, and her associates forced their way into the woman’s flat.

Ms Sobol insisted that she only rang the doorbell for Mr Kudryavtsev’s flat and that of his mother-in-law who lives next door.

Mr Navalny on Friday described the criminal case as an act of revenge for exposing the alleged hapless agent and expressed dismay that Russian investigators never found grounds to open a criminal investigation into his poisoning.

“(Police) broke down Sobol’s door and took her for questioning because she dared to ring the doorbell of Kudryavtsev,” he tweeted.

“Such a panicky response once again confirms the authenticity of (my) conversation with Kudryavsev.”

Ms Sobol, who was forced to give away her shoes to the investigators on Friday after she refused to give DNA samples, is currently listed as a witness in the inquiry.

Mr Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation published a public registry filing on Monday, showing that Mr Kudryavtsev purchased a flat with cash for roughly £70,000 about two months after his poisoning.

Mr Navalny joked on Friday that the agent would have been awarded with a more impressive property than the cheap flat in the suburbs if he and his colleagues had succeeded in the operation to kill him.

Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has repeatedly denied any involvement in Mr Navalny’s poisoning despite overwhelming evidence suggesting that the 44-year-old politician fell victim to a state-orchestrated attack.

The Kremlin denies the very fact of the Novichok poisoning and insists that it has yet to see medical proof.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, on Friday dismissed Mr Navalny’s full medical report published in the Lancet earlier this week as insufficient.

A well-researched investigation by independent investigative group Bellingcat released last week identified Russian intelligence agents, many of them with medical and chemistry backgrounds, who had been trailing Mr Navalny for days before he poisoned.

Mr Kudryavtsev, one of the alleged agents, revealed to Mr Navalny in the released phone call that he was sent to Siberia to get rid of the traces of Novichok which would remain on his clothes after the poisoning.