And a young mother, Lyubov Sobol , but above all a convinced activist. The right-hand man of “Putin’s number one enemy”, Alexiei Navalny , has never stopped in front of the Kremlin’s intimidation. She didn’t do it in 2019, when she went on hunger strike for several weeks, convinced that she has the right to be able to demonstrate against the Russian government. “I believe that a hunger strike is a means of applying pressure – said Sobol in an interview with the BBC -. Obviously, Putin looks at this action as blackmail and will not accept it, but it is the way in which I defend my rights ”. The lawyer ended up in jail that time, shortly after the interview, yanked out to a taxi by some Russian security officers.
And today history repeats itself. With Navalny in prison, Sobol and a group of supporters called a protest this weekend. The Financial Times writes that the Moscow authorities have asked for the cancellation of all traces of the convocation online. “They bring as many criminal cases against us as possible, they search us all the time and drag us in to question us to make our work harder and scare us,” Sobol told the British newspaper.
The next day, most likely due to the international visibility she has, the woman ended up in prison again. As had happened just before New Year (here the article by Formiche.net). Sobol had been arrested on suspicion of raiding a private home after the mother-in-law of an alleged spy involved in the Navalny poisoning case accused her of entering her apartment.
“They arrest the mother of a small girl to tell the world: do not investigate this case – wrote Navalny on Twitter from Germany -. Don’t be with our killers and poisoners, don’t ring their doors. These killers are untouchable ”.
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Lawyer Sobol is already known in Russia for her independent political career. She was arrested in August 2019 after a protest against Vladimir Putin’s government in Moscow. Oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin , known as Putin’s chef, had recently sued Sobol and Navalny for defamation.
Sobol is one of the few female faces on the front line against Putin. There had been Ksenia Sobchak , a former TV star, but her “flirtations” with the Kremlin deeply disappointed Putin’s opponents.
Now it seems to be Lyubov Eduardovna Sobol’s turn. She was born in Lobnya in 1987, and a lawyer and activist, a member of the Navalny Anti-Corruption Foundation. Her name means “love” in Russian.
Sobol graduated in Law and Business from Moscow State University. She had a future as a legal advisor, but in 2011 she decided to work together Navalny.
She is engaged to Sergei Mojovm , who suffered a syringe attack in the street in 2016 (many believe it was retaliation against her). She has a young daughter and is very active on social networks; she has over 240,000 followers on Instagram.
But Sobol’s great passion is politics. In March 2016, you said you wanted to run as a candidate for the Duma, the Russian parliament, for the administrative district of Moscow. Two months later, she retired. In July 2019, she wanted to stand in the elections as mayor of Moscow, but the electoral authorities blocked her candidacy, claiming that the signatures she had presented were invalid.
Known as the Russian Joan of Arc, she Sobol also knows how to be ironic. When she was attacked with a slimy black substance outside her apartment, she said, “At least it wasn’t faeces.” And she does not give up: she has already said that she hopes to stand in the legislative elections of 2021, to Putin’s “joy”.
