MOSCOW (AP) – Russian police have issued a strong warning against participating in protests scheduled for Sunday to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent enemy.
The warning comes amid arrests of Navalny associates and opposition journalists and a police plan to restrict movement in central Moscow on Sunday.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning. His arrest sparked protests across the country a week ago in nearly 100 cities; about 4,000 people were reportedly arrested.
The next demonstration in Moscow is scheduled for Lubyanka Square. The Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims is organizing to be poisoned with a Soviet-era nervous agent on behalf of the Kremlin, has its headquarters in the square. The Russian government has denied a role in poisoning the 44-year-old boy.
The city’s police department said much of central Moscow, from Red Square to Lubyanka, would have pedestrian restrictions and that seven subway stations in the vicinity would be closed on Sunday. Restaurants in the area will also be closed and the iconic GUM department store in Red Square said it would open only in the evening.
Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk cited the coronavirus pandemic in a warning Saturday against the protests. He said participants who were found to be in violation of epidemiological regulations could face criminal charges.
The January 23 protests in favor of Navalny were the largest and most widespread in Russia for many years, and authorities tried to prevent a repeat. This week police carried out a series of attacks on apartments and offices of the family, associates and anti-corruption organization Navalny.
His brother Oleg, top aide Lyubov Sobol and three other people were under house arrest for two months on Friday as part of a criminal investigation into alleged violations of coronavirus regulations during last weekend’s protests.
Sergei Smirnov, editor of the news site Mediazona founded by members of the punk collective Pussy Riot, was arrested by police on leaving home on Saturday. No charges were announced against him.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later he was taken to a hospital in Berlin. Laboratories in Germany, France, and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the nerve agent Novichok.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence indicating he was poisoned.
Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia on the grounds that his months of recovery in Germany violated the terms of the suspended sentence he received in a 2014 conviction for fraud and money laundering, a case he said was a political revenge.
Just after his arrest, Navalny’s team posted a two-hour video on their YouTube channel about a lavish Black Sea residence allegedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Facilities include a “water disco”, a smoking room equipped with cane dancing and a casino. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times and has inspired a series of sarcastic jokes on the Internet.
Putin has said that neither he nor any of his own relatives own the property, and the Kremlin has insisted it has no relationship with the president, although it is protected by the federal bodyguard agency FSO, which provides security to the senior government officials.
Later, Russian state television aired a report of the site showing it under construction and included an interview with an engineer who claimed the building would be a luxury hotel.
On Saturday, construction mogul Arkady Rotenberg, a close partner of Putin and his occasional judo teammate, claimed ownership of the property.