Prominent Russian protest leader Sergei Udaltsov arrived at the offices of the Investigative Committee in Moscow on Friday morning, where it is expected he will be charged with plotting “mass disorder,” RAPSI news agency reported.
Udaltsov, coordinator of the Left Front movement, told journalists waiting outside that the case against him was “a lie and a provocation.”
“If they expected me to leave the country, it was in vain. I will bear all of it and I hope those who support me will not be silent or give in,” he said.
The case against Udaltsov was opened after the October 5 broadcast of Anatomy of a Protest 2, the second instalment of a lurid expose on the opposition aired by NTV, a state-owned and fiercely pro-Kremlin television network.
The program claimed to show Udaltsov and two other opposition figures, Konstantin Lebedev and Leonid Razvozzhayev, plotting “mass disorder” together with an influential Georgian politician.
Udaltsov has been one of the key leaders in a series of mass protests which began in Russia following the parliamentary elections last December.