Law enforcement officials search Alexey Navalny’s Moscow apartment

Law enforcement officials are carrying out a search of Alexey Navalny’s apartment in Moscow, reported Anti-Corruption Foundation director Ivan Zhdanov on the afternoon of Wednesday, January 27.

“Alexey Navalny’s apartment in the Maryino [district] is being searched. There are many ‘heavies’ in masks. They started to break down the door,” he wrote on Twitter.

According to Zhdanov, the grounds for the search remain unknown. He also added that Alexey Navalny’s brother, Oleg Navalny, is inside the apartment.

Update. Ivan Zhdanov later reported that law enforcement officials had also arrived at Yulia Navalnaya’s apartment on Avtozavodskaya Street in Moscow. According to a video Zhdanov posted on Twitter, Navalnaya (Alexey Navalny’s wife) is refusing to open the door for the police until her lawyer arrives. Zhdanov told the Russian state news agency TASS that the searches are being conducted in connection with a criminal violation of sanitary and epidemiological rules.

Another update. Lyubov Sobol has also reported a search happening at the “Navalny Live” studio.

Alexey Navalny is currently in custody at Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina remand prison. He was jailed for 30 days on suspicion of evading the oversight of the prison authorities.

Navalny’s associates are planning countrywide rallies to protest his detention on Sunday, January 31. Ahead of protests in support of Navalny last Saturday, police officials detained a number of his closest associates.