MOSCOW (AP) – Nationwide protests against jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Russian authorities move swiftly to block new ones, from legal pressure on their allies to the launch of a campaign to discredit the demonstrations.
Unprecedented mass rallies in Russia on January 23 demanding the release of Navalny from prison led to thousands of arrests and dozens of criminal investigations were opened. Many of its main associates and allies have been imprisoned with some criminal charges condemning him to prison.
President Vladimir Putin compared the organizers of the protests to “terrorists” and lawmakers accused Navalny of being a Western servant and betrayed his country to benefit Russia’s opponents.
Navalny’s team admits the pressure is unprecedented, but says it will not give in and calls another rally on Sunday.
A look at the Kremlin’s unease and strategy:
WHAT DID THE PROTESTS BRING?
Navalny, Putin’s fiercest critic, returned to Russia on January 17 after five months in Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning with a nervous agent who blames the Kremlin and is denied by Russian officials.
Navalny, 44, was arrested at the airport on arrival and jailed for 30 days, awaiting a court hearing to send him to jail for alleged past convictions, which he said had a political motivation. A court on Thursday refused to release Navalny and rejected his arrest warrant.
Navalny is famous for his video investigations into official corruption. Following his arrest, his team posted a report on its YouTube channel about a $ 1.3 billion coastal enclosure allegedly built for Putin, with luxurious Italian furniture and even expensive toilet brushes. It has garnered over 100 million views. The Kremlin and even Putin, who never mentions Navalny by name, denied that it was built for him.
Navalny’s team called for mass protests to demand his release on January 23, and tens of thousands took to the streets in more than 100 Russian cities in recent years, the largest and most widespread cholera outbreak. anger against the Kremlin. The rallies took place despite their lack of permission, which previously deterred large turnout due to the threat of arrests.
WHAT WAS THE RESPONSE OF THE AUTHORITIES?
Days before the protests, about twenty Navalny associates were arrested. Notices that his team encouraged minors to take to the streets began to spread among parents. Navalny’s team denied the allegations.
In the same protests, more than 4,000 people were detained, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group that controls political detentions. He said it was the most important in its nine-year history of keeping records in the Putin era. In some cities, rallies were aggressively dispersed and human rights defenders said there were cases of violence. About 20 criminal investigations were opened for a wide range of charges.
On Wednesday, Moscow police carried out a series of attacks on apartments and offices belonging to Navalny associates and opposition figures, including his own apartment. The searches were conducted as part of investigations into alleged violations of coronavirus regulations during the protests, a charge that can last up to two years in prison.
Five people, including Navalny’s brother Oleg, and top ally Lyubov Sobol, have been detained for 48 hours in the case.
Russia’s investigative committee also accused Navalny strategist Leonid Volkov of encouraging minors to participate in unauthorized protests. Volkov, who left Russia two years ago, faces a possible prison sentence if he returns. The case against him opened a day after he wrote a post on Facebook urging minors not to protest.
“We have not faced this kind of pressure before,” Ivan Zhdanov, head of the Navalny Foundation for the fight against corruption, told the AP.
WHAT ABOUT OTHER OPPOSITION GROUPS?
For years, Russia’s opposition has consisted of fractured groups that often disagree with each other, although there have been cases of unity in recent years: in 2019, a campaign to allow candidates to the opposition running for Moscow city council brought together a dozen different politicians. and galvanizing mass protests every weekend for several weeks.
Navalny’s case garnered the unanimous support of several opposition politicians, even those who normally disagree with him. They attended the January 23 rally, issued statements demanding his release, and shared the video about “Putin’s palace” on social media.
“The pressure on someone who opposes the incumbent government, of course, affects everyone, and we must stand up for everyone and try to help in some way,” said Moscow politician Yulia Galyamina, who won prominence in the 2019 campaign and faced jail for protest violations, he told The Associated Press.
Some activists have been trapped in the crossfire. Moscow police arrested a member of the Civil Society movement, stormed his house and that of another member in Navalny’s investigations. Galyamina’s spokesman’s house was also raided.
DOES KREMLIN SEE THE PROTESTS AS A THREAT?
Officials dismissed last week’s protests as petty. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said an “insignificant number” of people turned out at the rallies, compared to the number of people voting for Putin.
At the same time, state-controlled television, which normally ignores opposition protests, devoted long segments to rallies, focusing on cases of violence by protesters and emphasizing police restraint.
Navalny’s team said Wednesday on the Telegram messaging app that this week’s raids are a sign of Putin’s “crazy fear” of mass rallies.
Analysts believe the government takes the protests very seriously. Tatyana Stanovaya, founder of R.Politik, a political thought group, says the leadership understands, to some extent, that there have been reasons for public frustration since an unpopular 2018 pension reform, in what increased retirement ages. But the Kremlin also believes the unrest Navalny is fostering is being backed by foreign adversaries.
“On the one hand, there is public frustration, on the other hand, there is … opposition that in the Kremlin is perceived as an instrument of foreign intelligence agencies. This combination can work to harden the line of the authorities, “Stanovaya told AP. “I think we’re already seeing it.”
WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO FOLLOW?
Both analysts and Navalny’s allies believe the crackdown will continue and is likely to escalate as the confrontation between the politician and authorities continues.
“I have been working with Navalny for ten years and year after year this machine of repression against us has never slowed down, it has only increased speed,” Sobol told reporters a day before his arrest.
Other Navalny allies remain unloaded. “Hopefully this will make people even angrier ahead of the Jan. 31 rallies and even more people will show up,” Zhdanov said.
It is crucial for the authorities to keep the situation under control before the September parliamentary elections, political analyst and former Kremlin speech director Abbas Gallyamov told Facebook.
The election will determine who controls the State Duma in 2024, when Putin’s current term expires and he will be able to seek re-election with six more years in office, thanks to last year’s constitutional reforms.
“Amid deteriorating living conditions and growing demand for change, one person is already inclined to refuse support to the authorities. To add insult to injury, protesters appear showing dissatisfaction that they are not alone, ”Gallyamov said. “The intensification of the street protest could cost the authorities an electoral catastrophe. To avoid it, any means is good ”.