Singing slogans against President Vladimir Putin, tens of thousands took to the streets on Sunday across Russia to demand the release of stuck opposition leader Alexey Navalny, maintaining the national protests that shook the Kremlin. More than 4,700 people were arrested by the police, according to a monitoring group, and some were beaten.
Russian authorities made a massive effort to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands of people gathered across the country last weekend, in the biggest and most widespread display of discontent that Russia has seen in years. Despite threats of arrest, warnings to social media groups and tight police cordons, the protests again involved cities across Russia’s 11 time zones on Sunday.
Navalny’s team quickly called for another protest in Moscow on Tuesday, when he is expected to face an audience 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 poisoning by a nervous agent that he attributes to the Kremlin. Russian authorities rejected the charges. He was arrested for allegedly violating his conditions of probation by failing to attend meetings with law enforcement officials when he was recovering in Germany
MAXIMUM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
The United States 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 the Russian authorities for the second week in a row,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter.
Russia’s foreign ministry rejected Blinken’s request as “gross 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 in protests in cities across the country, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political prisons, exceeding about 4,000 arrests in demonstrations across Russia on 23 January.
In Moscow, authorities introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closing metro stations near the Kremlin, cutting off bus traffic and ordering restaurants and shops to remain closed.
Navalny’s team initially asked for Sunday’s protest to be held in Lubyanka Square in Moscow, where the headquarters of the Federal Security Service is located, which Navalny claims was responsible for his poisoning. Facing police cordons around the square, the protest then moved to other central squares and streets.
MAXIMUM SHEMETOV / REUTERS
The police were picking people up at random and putting them on police buses, but thousands of protesters marched through the city center for hours, shouting “Putin, resign!” and “Putin, thief!” – a reference to an opulent Black Sea property supposedly built for the Russian leader that was featured in a widely popular video released by Navalny’s team.
“I am not afraid, because we are the majority,” said Leonid Martynov, who participated in the protest. “We shouldn’t be afraid of clubs because the truth is on our side.”
At one point, crowds of protesters walked towards Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where Navalny is being held. They were greeted by phalanxes of riot police who pushed the march back and chased the protesters through the yards, detaining dozens and beating some with batons. Even so, protesters continued to march around the Russian capital, zigzagging around police cordons.
In Moscow, nearly 1,500 people were arrested, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia. “If we keep quiet, they’ll come after any of us tomorrow,” she said on Instagram before leaving to protest.
YURI BELYAT / REUTERS
Amnesty International said Moscow authorities have arrested so many people that the city’s detention facilities have run out of space. “The Kremlin is waging a war on the human rights of people in 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, shouting “Down with the tsar!” and occasional fights broke out when some protesters pushed the police trying to make arrests. More than 1,000 were arrested.
Some of the biggest 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 such a country,” said Vyacheslav Vorobyov, 55, who attended a rally in Yekaterinburg. “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 demonstrators and journalists” and urged Russia “to release all detainees unjustly, including Navalny. “
As part of a multi-faceted effort by the authorities to block the protests, the courts arrested Navalny members and activists across the country last week. His brother Oleg, aide Lyubov Sobol and three others were placed on Friday under two-month house arrest on charges of 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 harsh warnings to the public, saying that protesters could be accused of participating in mass rebellions, which carry a prison sentence of up to eight years.
The protests were fueled by a two-hour YouTube video released by Navalny’s team after his arrest over 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 crisis.
Russia saw great corruption during Putin’s term, while poverty remained widespread.
Protesters in Moscow shouted “Aqua discotheque!” – a reference to one of the residence’s luxurious amenities, which also offers a casino and a hookah lounge equipped to watch pole dance.
Putin says neither he nor any of his close relatives own the property. On Saturday, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime Putin confidant and his occasional judo training partner, said he himself owned the property.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20, during a flight from Siberia to Moscow, and the pilot diverted the plane so that it could be treated in the city of Omsk. He was transferred to a Berlin hospital two days later. Laboratories in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the nervous agent Novichok.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full criminal investigation, citing lack of evidence that he was poisoned.
Navalny was arrested immediately after his return to Russia earlier this month and imprisoned for 30 days at the request of the Russian prison service, which alleged that he had violated the probation of his suspended sentence of a 2014 money laundering conviction that rejected as political revenge.
On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny’s appeal to be released, and another hearing on Tuesday could turn his suspended 3 1/2-year sentence into one he is expected to serve in prison. Navalny’s team called for another protest outside the court building.