Navalny protests threaten Snowball as discontent grows in Russia

But weekend protests over Mr Navalny’s detention on his return to Russia after he recovered from a poisonous attack threaten to turn into a wider movement. Dissatisfaction is now turning into anger after a court ordered Mr Navalny to be remanded in custody for 30 days, fueled by chronic corruption, the pain of falling oil prices last year and the Covid-19 blockade.

“We have a real problem with corruption, on the one hand, and poverty, on the other,” said Evgeniya Ragozina, a 28-year-old lawyer who withstood temperatures as low as 20 degrees Fahrenheit to joined a rally in the Siberian city of Tyumen. She added that Mr Navalny’s arrest was just the trigger.

“People are more scared that they don’t see a decent future for themselves,” she said. “It simply came to our notice then [protesting] until the end of Putin’s political regime. ”

Saturday’s rallies were among the largest demonstrations of dissent nationwide in recent years, with more than 100,000 people in total, according to local media estimates. Police detained about 3,700 people that day, more than any other time since a wave of anti-Kremlin protests shook Russia in 2011 and 2012.

Organizers said they planned several demonstrations for Sunday, at a time when Mr Putin was laying the groundwork to stay in power for years to come. Last year, the Russians approved a series of constitutional amendments initiated by the Kremlin that would allow it to remain until 2036, in a vote that was organized largely as a demonstration of support for the leader.

Mr Navalny became a symbol of protests after being detained on his return from Germany, where he had recovered from a poisonous attack in Siberia during the summer. Last weekend’s rallies, in which protesters quarreled with police and hit them with snowballs, included many of his followers.

But the crowds also included a wider coalition of middle-aged and middle-class Russians. Surveys of protesters in Moscow on Saturday found more than 40 percent protesting for the first time. The protests are taking place amid rising poverty and rising inflation, triggered by a 20% drop in the ruble’s value last year. Many Russians say the government has not done enough to ease the pandemic.

Mr Putin is not in imminent political danger. Many Russians still consider him irreplaceable and his approval rating was 65% in November, according to the independent Levada poll. He also has Russia’s security forces and judiciary on his side, giving him ample space to wait for protests, as did his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko since the summer elections.

But Mr Navalny and his team continue to wipe out Mr Putin’s authority with the general public he has built by posting videos accusing Kremlin-linked officials of corruption. In the days before the protest, they released another video, this time with an opulent palace with a casino and a rooftop hockey rink that was allegedly built for Mr. Putin on the Black Sea coast. Unusually, Mr Putin spoke on Monday, denying any knowledge of who owns the building and denounced the allegations. Normally, he tries to belittle Mr Navalny, avoid using his name or ignore his accusations.

The video has already garnered over 90 million views on YouTube and has struck a chord with many Russians who have largely fallen in love with stories about the leader’s wealth.

“The mood in society is changing,” said Konstantin Kalachev, a Moscow-based political analyst who said there was a wide range of problems leading people to the streets. “The reason for the protest is different for each protester.”

The Kremlin’s initial response seems to throw Mr. Navalny as an agent of the United States and its allies. The head of Russia’s strong Security Council said on Tuesday that the West needed Mr Navalny to destabilize Russia.

Mr Putin has long enjoyed confrontation with the West, which has triggered Western sanctions in response to alleged hacking attacks and an attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election, which Mr Putin has denied. Last year, Russian lawmakers passed a bill designating political or campaign groups that receive funds from abroad as foreign agents, subjecting them to restrictions.

Political analysts, however, suggest that Mr Putin and his allies are still looking for a strategy beyond mass arrests to control the swelling in protest and are likely to be keenly aware of how similar rallies have forced them to release him. Mr Navalny after being detained in 2013.

“The Kremlin has no strategy or even tactics to respond to, apart from the line of force,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, a Russian domestic policy expert at the Carnegie Center in Moscow.

Write to Thomas Grove at [email protected] and Georgi Kantchev at [email protected]