Chanting slogans against President Vladimir Putin, tens of thousands took to the streets across Russia on Sunday to demand release closed opposition leader Alexey Navalny, maintaining national protests that shook the Kremlin. More than 4,700 people were detained by police, according to a monitoring group, and some were beaten.
Russian authorities have made a massive effort to stop the wave of demonstrations after tens of thousands gathered across the country last weekend in the largest and most widespread spectacle of discontent Russia has seen in years. Despite threats of imprisonment, warnings to social groups and tight police cordons, protests again engulfed cities in Russia’s 11 time zones on Sunday.
Navalny’s team quickly called for another protest in Moscow on Tuesday, when it faces a court hearing that could send him to prison for years.
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator who is Putin’s best-known critic, was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nervous breakdowns, which he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied the allegations. He was arrested for allegedly violating parole conditions by failing to report to meetings with law enforcement while healing in Germany.
MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
The United States has urged Russia to release Navalny and criticized the crackdown on protests.
“The United States condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for a second week in a row,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter.
Russia’s foreign ministry has rejected Blinken’s call as “cruel interference in Russia’s internal affairs” and accused Washington of trying to destabilize the situation in the country by supporting the protests.
On Sunday, police detained more than 4,700 people protesting in cities nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests. exceeding approximately 4,000 restraints at demonstrations across Russia on January 23.
In Moscow, authorities have introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closed subway stations near the Kremlin, reduced bus traffic and ordered restaurants and shops to remain closed.
Navalny’s team initially demanded that Sunday’s protest take place in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, home to the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims is responsible for his poisoning. In front of police cordons around the square, the protest then moved to other squares and central streets.
MAXIM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
Police picked up people at random and put them on police buses, but thousands of protesters marched through the city center for hours chanting “Putin, resign!” and “Putin, thief!” – a reference to an opulent Black Sea property built for the Russian leader, which was featured in a popular video released by the Navalny team.
“I’m not afraid, because we are the majority,” said Leonid Martynov, who took part in the protest. “Clubs shouldn’t scare us because the truth is on our side.”
At one point, crowds of protesters marched on Matrosskaya Tishina Prison, where Navalny is being held. They were greeted by phalanxes of police who pushed back the march and drove the protesters through the yards, detaining dozens and beating some with sticks. However, protesters continued to march around the Russian capital, zigzagging around police cordons.
Nearly 1,500 people were detained in Moscow, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia. “If we remain silent, they will come after any of us tomorrow,” she said on Instagram before protesting.
YURI BELYAT / REUTERS
Amnesty International says Moscow authorities have arrested so many people that the city’s detention facilities have run out of space. “The Kremlin is waging a war against the human rights of the people of Russia, stifling protesters’ calls for freedom and change,” Natalia Zviagina, head of the group’s Moscow office, said in a statement.
Several thousand people marched through Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, chanting “Down with the Tsar!” and occasional disgust erupted as some protesters dismissed police who tried to make detentions. More than 1,000 were arrested.
Some of the largest rallies took place in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk in Eastern Siberia and Ekaterinburg in the Urals.
“I do not want my grandchildren to live in such a country,” said Vyacheslav Vorobyov, 55, who attended a rally in Ekaterinburg. “I want them to live in a free country.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, who currently chairs the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, condemned “excessive use of force by the authorities and mass detention of peaceful protesters and journalists” and urged Russia “to release all detainees unjustly, including Navalny. “
As part of a multiple effort by authorities to block the protests, courts have convicted Navalny associates and activists across the country in the past week. His brother Oleg, senior assistant Lyubov Sobol and three others were placed under house arrest for two months on Friday on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions during last weekend’s protests.
Prosecutors also called for social media platforms to block calls to join the protests.
The interior ministry has issued stern warnings to the public, saying protesters could be charged with participating in mass riots, which sentence up to eight years in prison.
The protests were fueled by a two-hour YouTube video released by Navalny’s team after his arrest about the alleged Black Sea residence built for Putin. The video has been viewed over 100 million times, inspiring a stream of sarcastic jokes on the internet amid an economic recession.
Russia has experienced widespread corruption during Putin’s tenure, while poverty has remained widespread.
Protesters in Moscow chanted “Aqua disco!” – a reference to one of the luxury residence facilities, which also has a casino and a hookah lounge equipped for watching pole dancing.
Putin says neither he nor any close relative owns the property. On Saturday, construction mogul Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime confidant of Putin and his judo partner, said he owned the property himself.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow, and the pilot diverted the plane so that he could be treated in the city of Omsk. He was transferred to a hospital in Berlin two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, as well as tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, have established that he was exposed to the nerve agent Novichok.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full criminal investigation, claiming there was no evidence that he had been poisoned.
Navalny was arrested immediately on his return to Russia earlier this month and jailed for 30 days at the request of the Russian prison service, which allegedly violated the probation of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money laundering conviction he rejected. as political revenge.
On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny’s appeal for release, and another hearing on Tuesday could turn his three-and-a-half-year suspended sentence into one he must serve in prison. Navalny’s team demanded another protest in front of the courthouse.