The Russian Justice Ministry has suspended the political party registration of Alexey Navalny's group “Russia of the Future,” citing what Navalny called in a blog post “baseless and contradictory” reasons.

In mid-June, Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation submitted paperwork to the Justice Ministry to register a new political party. The group’s founding convention took place in mid-May, when Navalny was serving out a month-long jail sentence for organizing unpermitted anti-Putin protests on May 5. The group kept the party’s name a secret until the last moment, trying to prevent “spoiler parties” from stealing their name and blocking their registration for a third straight time.

Navalny has been trying to register his own political party for the past five years. First he tried to establish “The People’s Alliance,” and then came “The Progress Party.” The Justice Ministry refused to register these groups, saying it never received copies of registration documents from regional offices in more than half the regions in Russia (a requirement for registering a national political party). Navalny’s most recent rejection was in January 2018, and he is challenging that decision in the European Court of Human Rights.

Navalny has had to change his initiative’s name several times because political opponents keep stealing the name and registering their own groups, blocking his applications. In 2013, the political consultant Andrey Bogdanov snatched away the name “The People’s Alliance,” and in 2018 one of Navalny’s former associates teamed up with Bogdanov to steal “The Progress Party.”