Tens of thousands join the protests in support of Russian opposition leader Navalny

Singing slogans against President Vladimir Putin, tens of thousands took to the streets on Sunday across Russia to demand the release of imprisoned opposition leader Alexey Navalny, maintaining protests across the country that have sparked the Kremlin. According to a surveillance group, more than 4,700 people were arrested by police, and some were beaten.

Russian authorities made a massive effort to stem the tide of protests after tens of thousands of people gathered across the country last weekend in the largest and most widespread show of discontent Russia had seen in years. Despite threats of prison sentences, warnings to social media groups and tight police cordons, protests once again engulfed cities in Russia’s eleven time zones on Sunday.

Navalny’s team quickly called another protest in Moscow on Tuesday, when he faces a court hearing that could send him to prison for years.

It was Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator who is Putin’s best-known critic arrested Jan. 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have denied the allegations. He was arrested for allegedly breaching his parole conditions when he failed to appear at law enforcement meetings when he was recovering in Germany.

The United States urged Russia to release Navalny and criticized the crackdown on protests.

“The U.S. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for the second week in a row,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter.

The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected Blinken’s call as “crude 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 arrested more than 4,700 people in protests in cities across the country, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests. surpassing some 4,000 arrests in demonstrations all over Russia on January 23rd.

In Moscow, authorities introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closing subway stations near the Kremlin, cutting off bus traffic and ordering restaurants and shops to remain closed.

Navalny’s team initially called for Sunday’s protest to be held in Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, the headquarters of the Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims was responsible for his poisoning. In front of the police cordons around the square, the protest moved to other squares and central streets.

Police picked up random people and put her 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 estate built by the Russian leader that appeared in a very popular video posted by Navalny’s team.

“I’m not afraid, because we are the majority,” said Leonid Martynov, who took part in the protest. “We don’t have to be afraid of clubs because the truth is on our side.”

At one point, crowds of protesters marched towards Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where Navalny is being held. They encountered phalanxes of riot police who backed down and chased protesters through the courtyards, stopping scores and hitting some with clubs. However, protesters continued to march around the Russian capital, zigzagging around police cordons.

About 1,500 people were arrested in Moscow, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia. “If we shut up, tomorrow they will come after any of us,” he said on Instagram before going out to protest.

Amnesty International said Moscow authorities had arrested so many people that the city’s detention facilities had run out of space. “The Kremlin is waging a war against the human rights of people in Russia, stifling protesters’ demands for freedom and change,” Natalia Zviagina, head of the group’s office in Moscow, said in a statement.

Several thousand people toured Russia’s second largest city, St. Petersburg, singing “Down with the Tsar.” and occasional explosions erupted when some protesters pushed back police who tried to stop them. More than 1,000 were arrested.

Some of the largest rallies were held in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, in eastern Siberia, and in Yekaterinburg, in the Urals.

“I don’t want my grandchildren to live in a country like this,” 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 Cooperation in Europe, condemned “the excessive use of force by the authorities and the 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 jailed Navalny associates and activists across the country over the past week. His brother Oleg, top aide Lyubov Sobol and three other people were placed under house arrest for two months on Friday on charges of allegedly violating coronavirus restrictions during last weekend’s protests.

Prosecutors also demanded that social media platforms block calls to join the protests.

The Interior Ministry issued severe warnings to the public, saying protesters could be charged with participating in mass riots, with a prison sentence of up to eight years.

The protests were fueled by a two-hour YouTube video posted by Navalny’s team following his arrest on the Black Sea residence allegedly built for Putin. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times, inspiring a series of sarcastic jokes on the Internet amid an economic recession.

Russia has seen extensive corruption during Putin’s tenure, while poverty has remained widespread.

Protesters in Moscow chanted “Aqua disco!” – a reference to one of the luxury amenities of the residence, which also includes a casino and a hookah lounge equipped to watch pole dancing.

Putin says neither he nor any of his own relatives own the property. On Saturday, construction mogul Arkady Rotenberg, a former confidant of Putin and his occasional judo teammate, claimed he owned the property himself.

Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while traveling from Siberia to Moscow and the pilot diverted the plane to be treated in the city of Omsk. 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-blown criminal investigation, alleging lack of evidence that he was poisoned.

Navalny was arrested immediately after returning to Russia earlier this month and jailed for 30 days at the request of Russia’s prison service, which allegedly violated the evidence of his suspended sentence of a money laundering conviction. of 2014 which he has rejected as political revenge. .

On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny’s appeal to release him and another hearing on Tuesday could turn his 3-and-a-half-year suspended sentence into one he must serve in prison. Navalny’s team called another protest in front of the courthouse.