Is it true that the grandfather of Alexei Navalny worked with the Germans during the war?

In February 2021, information appeared on the Russian -speaking Internet that the grandfather of the politician Alexei Navalny during the Great Patriotic War was a policeman. We checked whether there are confirmations of these statements.

For the first time such an accusation appeared February 6, 2021 on the Instagram account Russia_.Power. The author of the publication claims that the Grandfather of Politics Ivan Tarasovich Navalny “was in the service of those who occupied the territory of Ukraine, worked for the Nazis”, and the “curtain of secrets opened” thanks to the “military archive workers”, who showed the house book of the Navalny family. Four days later, on the YouTube channel "Voice of the Fatherland" associated with the national liberation movement, appeared A video that retells the contents of the post on Instagram. Apparently, publications are caused by a recent court over Navalny, who found guilty In the slander of the veteran of Ignat Artomenko.

The post, of which grandfather Alexei Navalny is accused of cooperation with the Germans during the war years appeared in the Russia_.Power account on Instagram. This profile was created at the end of August 2020; Since then, the author has made more than 1,500 publications, that is, on average every day I uploaded eight to nine photos. Most photographs are accompanied by signatures in support of the authorities and very radical comments regarding protests, Ukraine, Europe and the West as a whole. At the time of writing the publication, a little over 600 people are signed on the account, and the description of the profile consists of reference to the website of the All -Russian Popular Front.

The publication itself consists of three photos. The first two are the image of the family of Ivan Tarasovich Navalny and a fragment of this photograph, which shows only the grandfather of the politician. Apparently, the family portrait is genuine - back in 2013 Published Ukrainian portal Vesti.ua. The third image in the publication is a very blurry photograph of a certain document of the Soviet era. Judging by the approval of the author, this is a house book, represented by employees of an unnamed military archive.

It turned out that this paper has nothing to do with wartime, and it was not shown by an employee of the military archive, but by the secretary of the village council. February 4, 2021 "Ukrainian BBC Service" released plot About located near Kyiv by the village of New Zhezhey, where the father of Russian politician was born. Journalists went to the Kyiv region to learn more about the “historical homeland” of the opposition. Now the village council of the new Zalesya is headed by his distant relative Pavel Navalny. It was he who sent BBC reporters to his assistant Irina Voloshina, who showed records of Navalny's grandfather in the 1956 house book. This document says that Navalny and his wife and three children lived in his own house of 1939 of construction with a knife and garden. The family also owned cow and piglets. Nothing is said about cooperation with German invaders in the house book. Thus, the publication on Instagram is not based on an exclusive from the "military archive", but on the distortion of the report of Ukrainian journalists.

The BBC report was used in their video by the authors of the Voice of the Fatherland channel. At the same time, instead of the original sound path in Ukrainian in several fragments, they laid out Russian -speaking. The statements contained in the latter are strikingly different from the comments of Voloshina and the content of the house book itself, but almost completely coincide with the signature for the original publication on Instagram. By the way, on February 12, a fragment of this video with mounted sound Published And in the RUSSIA_.Power account.

The Instagram user, who told his subscribers about the grandfather of Navalny, who allegedly was a policeman, did not stop there and on February 22 Published New post. It consisted of several photographs of rather poor quality: the cover of a certain criminal case, the cover of clearly another criminal case, allegedly instructed on Ivan Tarasovich Navalny, and the screenshot of a certain site, which tells about the amnesty of Soviet citizens who collaborated with the invaders during the war adopted in 1955. Where did the blogger come from these documents and why he did not present them to the subscribers at once was unknown. We were not able to find in open sources a criminal case against Navalny’s grandfather, but even if the presented cover is genuine, it is unlikely to serve as proof of collaboration of Ivan Navalny. This cover indicates that grandfather is accused under Art. 80 of the Criminal Code of the Ukrainian SSR, in which Described Punishment is not for collaboration or war crimes, but for concealment of foreign exchange earnings and other tax violations.

In some publications, telling About the verified approval, another argument is given: there is no information that Navalny received orders or medals for participating in battles. On the portal "Feat of the people", where information about all known cases of awards is collected, about Ivan Tarasovich Navalny really nothing Not reported. However, it is quite difficult to consider this evidence that the grandfather of politics was a “policeman”, because many participants in the war for one reason or another returned from the front without awards. On the same site, the “feat of the people” we could not find references, for example, about the fathers of Boris Yeltsin, Viktor Chernomyrdin, Nursultan Nazarbayev and Leonid Kravchuk. We also failed to find confirmation on the sites of military archives in Russia and Ukraine that the grandfather of Alexei Navalny collaborated with the German military. Thus, at the moment there is no reliable evidence that the charge voiced by the Instagram user has a reason. On the contrary, it is based on assumptions and manipulations with facts from the plot of BBC.

Fake

What do our verdicts mean?

Read on the topic:

1. https://www.bbc.com/ukranian/features-russian-55922932
2. https://zona.media/online/2021/02/05/navalny-1281
3. https://vesti.ua/strana/21302-ukrainskie-rodstvenniki-navalnogo-rasskazali-o--mastinyh-kornja