MOSCOW -- Russia's Federal Financial Monitoring Service (Rosfinmonitoring) on February 9 added jailed opposition activist Sergei Udaltsov to its list of terrorists, meaning that all of his assets in Russia will be frozen.
Last month, Moscow's Basmanny district court placed Udaltsov in a pretrial detention center in the Russian capital until at least February 15 on a charge of justifying terrorism.
Udaltsov was detained on January 11 after police searched his home.
Udaltsov told journalists at the time that the charge against him stemmed from his public support of members of a so-called Marxist group in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, who were arrested last year on a charge of creating a terrorist organization.
Udaltsov pleaded not guilty, insisting that since the arrested members of the Marxist group have yet to be convicted, they are considered innocent, and therefore the charge against him -- justifying terrorism -- is illegal.
If convicted, Udaltsov faces up to seven years in prison.
The 46-year-old Udaltsov is the leader of the Left Front movement. He was one of the most prominent figures during mass anti-government protests in 2011-2012.
He spent more than four years in prison for organizing mass protests in 2012 against the inauguration of President Vladimir Putin. Udaltsov was released from prison in August 2017.
Despite parole-like restrictions imposed on him after his release, Udaltsov continued to take part in anti-government rallies and has been sentenced to weeks in jail several times.
His wife, Anastasia Udaltsova, is a member of the Russian parliament's lower chamber, the State Duma.
Udaltsov has continued to criticize Putin, but has supported Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.
Recently he openly supported Igor Girkin (aka Strelkov), once a leader of Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine's east who is now incarcerated.
On January 25, a court in Moscow sentenced Girkin to four years in prison on a charge of making public calls for extremist activities.
Girkin, 53, was arrested in July 2023 after strongly criticizing Putin in online statements for his handling of the Ukraine invasion, referring to the Russian president as a “nonentity” and accusing him of “cowardly mediocrity.”