Bloomberg: the Kremlin forbade officials to mention the name of Alexei Navalny

According to Bloomberg, who cites three sources familiar with the situation, the Kremlin "is concerned about the popularity" of Navalny and is denied him public status.

The agency points out that the ban on mentioning Navalny’s name was violated by the head of the Rosnano state corporation, Anatoly Chubais, who during the debate with Navalny on the Dozhd TV channel called him a “young budding politician”.

As RBC reported, citing sources related to Rosnano, Chubais’s participation in the debate with Navalny was the reason for intensifying the investigation of criminal cases that were instituted after checking the state corporation in 2013 – 2014. According to one of the interlocutors of RBC, the security forces had views of Chubais’s comrades-in-arms, and after the debate between the head of “Rosnano” and Navalny, Chubais’s people were no longer defended in the Kremlin.

Debate Chubais with Navalny 24 passed June. On July 1, the former head of Rosnanotech (the current Rosnano), Leonid Melamed, was detained. According to RBC sources, the attack on Chubais’s partners was given a week before the arrest of Melamed, when the former head of Rosnanotech was called in for questioning by the investigative committee.

Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov told RBC that law enforcement agencies did not inform the president about plans to arrest Melamed. “They do not need to coordinate such information with the president,” emphasized Peskov.

After Melamed was placed under house arrest, several former and present Chubais associates left Russia, according to RBC sources. Former Financial Director of RAO UES and Melamed’s business partner Dmitry Zhurba went to the UK. Andrei Malyshev, former deputy chairman of Rosnano and former head of the E4 Group, also left Russia and is in Europe.

A member of the Board of Rosnano and the Foundation for the Development of Infrastructure and Educational Programs, Jacob Urinson, went to one of the countries of Eastern Europe. Andrei Rappoport (now president of the Skolkovo business school) also left Russia and Rusnano’s former deputy chairman.

At the end of April, a spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, asked whether Putin perceives Navalny as a possible political threat, saying that “probably a president with such a level of trust and popularity, with such an electoral rating, can hardly be perceived by other politicians as a threat” .

In September, Kommersant 2013, citing Peskov, said that Putin did not pronounce the name Navalny, because he did not want to “give him some of his popularity.” Later, Kommersant canceled this message. As Andrei Kolesnikov, president of the journalism academy of Kommersant, explained, the news came after the lecture of Peskov to the students of the academy, where the presidential press secretary spoke in a “off-record” format.