Persecution case of Navalny's supporters in Volgograd comes to court

Residents of Volgograd have filed a lawsuit after journalists from a pro-governmental TV channel disclosed their personal data. The journalists filmed Volgograd townspeople as they laid flowers in memory of Alexei Navalny, and then disseminated their data, treating them as potential saboteurs.

The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that journalists-presenters of the "Volgograd-1" TV channel stated that they had conducted a "journalistic inquiry" about those city residents who brought flowers to the monument to the victims of political repressions.

"After leaking the Volgograd residents' personal data after they laid flowers at the above monument on the days of Navalny's conviction and death, we gathered the alleged 'perpetrators' and organized filing of lawsuits against the 'Volgograd-1' TV channel," the movement "Watch in Volgograd" has quoted the suffered persons in its Telegram channel.

Earlier, Vladimir Telpuk said that the journalists-authors of the above TV programme had used the video footage of him as a refrain for the whole programme.

"These persons (Sergey Mazanov, a journalist, and Roman Potolovsky, a former member of the Volgograd City Duma, – note of the 'Caucasian Knot') staged a real questioning of me, which they filmed on their phones. <...> Then I saw this video on air. They showed me there in the context with accusations of hostility and harm to the state and society. I treat it as illegal and dangerous for myself," Vladimir Telpuk has stated.

Roman Melnichenko, a former Associate Professor at the Volgograd State University, was also an object of the above "journalistic inquiry." "I lit a candle at the monument. I saw them secretly filming me from a car parked nearby," he has explained.