MOSCOW (AP) – An important ally of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny has announced a new anti-government protest, urging residents of major cities to meet briefly in residential courtyards on Sunday night with their cell phone lanterns on.
Navalny strategist Leonid Volkov said the protest would start at 8 pm and last for 15 minutes. The new demonstration format – similar to the tactics that opposition supporters employed during the protests in neighboring Belarus – could prevent Russian riot police interference and allow anyone to participate, Volkov wrote in a post on Tuesday. Facebook.
The protest will coincide with Valentine’s Day and Volkov called his ad “Love is stronger than fear”.
“You are going to lift the flashlights on your cell phone – and someone, who knows, will bring candles – and form a heart with them … You will take a photo from above, of one of the apartments, and post on Instagram. We will have social media feeds filled with thousands of glittering hearts from dozens of Russian cities, ”wrote Volkov. “Without OMON (riot police), without fear.”
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption investigator and the most prominent critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was arrested on January 17 on his return from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nervous agent poisoning he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charge.
His arrest and detention sparked protests across the country, with tens of thousands of people gathering across Russia for two consecutive weekends in the biggest outbreak of discontent in years.
Russian authorities responded with severe repression. More than 11,000 people were arrested and hundreds were sentenced to prison. Several of Navalny’s close allies face criminal charges and are under house arrest.
Last week, a Moscow court ruled that while Navalny was recovering in Germany, he violated the parole terms of his suspended sentence for a 2014 money laundering conviction and ordered him to serve two years and eight months. prison. Even before that decision, Navalny rejected the 2014 political persecution conviction and the European Court of Human Rights found it “arbitrary and manifestly irrational”.
After strong police repression, Volkov said the protests should be stopped until spring, as trying to maintain the protests every weekend would lead to many more arrests.
However, on Tuesday, he cited the need to “adopt something that is stronger than fear” of repression and to make a demonstration that the police could not derail.
“We have already become the majority, but Putin divides us by cords (of the riot police) so that we cannot see each other and see how many of us are. We need to find a way to overcome this, ”wrote Volkov.
Asked whether the opposition’s call to meet in courtyards could be seen as an incentive for unauthorized protests, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “difficult to say” but assured reporters that if anyone in Russia violate the law, they will be held responsible by law enforcement authorities.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accused on Tuesday that Navalny’s allies were NATO “agents of influence” and that they changed their minds about stopping the protests after receiving instructions from members of the block “on how to be ‘smarter’ to continue subversive jobs.”
Zakharova pointed to an online conference with EU, US and UK officials that Volkov and another Navalny associate, Vladimir Ashurkov, attended on Monday. Volkov said on Twitter that sanctions against Russian officials and tycoons were being discussed at the event.
Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment increased tensions between Russia and the European Union. European leaders demanded the release of the opposition leader and several European countries suggested imposing additional sanctions on Moscow.
The Kremlin said it would not listen to Western criticism of Navalny’s condemnation and police action against his supporters.