This summer, police visited the Lipetsk office of the Communist Party several times. The first such raid, involving officers from Center E and other security personnel, took place on July 31. The stated reason was information allegedly received about possible “extremist activity” by the communists.
The order authorizing operational-search measures said that CPRF representatives might be involved in organizing mass riots and extremist activity aimed at undermining the constitutional order and destabilizing the political situation in the region.
Law enforcement officers first searched the office of regional party chief Nikolai Razvorotnev and then inspected the entire regional committee headquarters. They left only around midnight, taking office equipment, hard drives, campaign materials, and a freshly printed 70,000-copy run of the newspaper Pravda.
“Everything is being done to paralyze the work of the CPRF election headquarters at the height of the campaign,” the party said after the search.
Party supporters believe the pressure is retaliation for criticism of Governor Igor Artamonov. However, Kommersant, citing political analyst Alexander Nemtsev and other sources, reported that in their view the security services acted on their own, without direct coordination with the governor’s team.
Nemtsev also argued that Gennady Zyuganov’s party organization in Lipetsk continues to “play by its own rules” and allegedly maintains pre-war ties with non-systemic groups and organizations labeled foreign agents. Under that version, local CPRF representatives may have used materials produced by “foreign agents” in campaign literature without the required disclaimer.