Saturday, January 23, 2021

THE UNFINISHED BOURGEOIS REVOLUTION!
Tens of thousands protest across Russia in support of poisoned Putin critic Navalny

Tens of thousands of people have joined protests across dozens of cities in Russia, demanding the release of Alexey Navalny, the Kremlin critic who was jailed last week after he returned to the country
for the first time since recovering from a poisoning with a nerve agent.
© Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images Protesters clash with riot police during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny in downtown Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021.
© Navalny team Youtube page/AFP via Getty Images Alexei Navalny speaking while waiting for a court hearing at a police station in Khimki, Russia, Jan. 18, 2021.

The protests were one of the largest displays of popular opposition to the rule of president Vladimir Putin in years, mushrooming in almost every large city across Russia and attracting unusually big crowds. Almost everywhere, the protesters were confronted by heavily armored riot police who moved to disperse them.

By early evening, police had detained over 1,600 people, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors arrests, and that number seemed likely to grow.
© Getty Images Young protesters hold banners as climb atop a lamppost in Pushkin Square, Moscow, Jan. 23, 2021.

In Moscow, Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalny, was detained at the protest, where lines of riot police later dispersed the crowd with batons.

Navalny had called for the nationwide protests on Saturday after authorities sent him to prison a week ago, setting up a test of the strength of Navalny's support in the country, following his poisoning and return to Russia.
© Dmitri Lovetsky/AP People gather to protest against the jailing of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in St.Petersburg, Russia, Jan. 23, 2021.

Protests were held in almost every large city, beginning first in Russia's far east which is seven hours ahead of Moscow and then continuing throughout the day, spreading across Siberia until reaching cities on the border of Europe. Videos posted online showed crowds-- ranging from several hundred to a few thousand-- gathering in groups or marching in long processions, chanting slogans including, "Putin is a thief."

In Moscow, part of the city center was flooded with thousands of people. While there's no definitive reported number on the size of the crowd, Reuters estimated it at 40,000. Moscow's police, who commonly undercount crowd size, said it was just 4,000.Russia extends Navalny's detention as outcry over his arrest grows

In the far eastern city of Vladivostok, a crowd of around 3,000 people gathered. Video posted on social media appear to show riot police officers charging at demonstrators with batons.

In many large eastern cities and in Siberia, other video posted online show long processions of people marching and chanting slogans such as "Putin is a thief."

© Kirill Kudryavtsev/AFP via Getty Images Protesters clash with riot police during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny in downtown Moscow, Jan. 23, 2021.

The protests, although not huge outside of Moscow, were still remarkable for their size and geographic spread, stretching into regions normally indifferent to Navalny.

Navalny has traditionally had little pull beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg and his previous calls for nationwide protests have usually only seen small crowds of a few hundred in most regional cities.

Crowds, ranging from several hundred to a few thousand took to the streets in often biting cold. In the Siberian city Omsk, where an estimated thousand people marched the temperature was -20 degrees Fahrenheit. In Novosibirsk, videos filmed by local media showed riot police with steel shields chasing protesters onto a frozen lake.
© Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images Police detain a protester during a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny in downtown Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021.

In the far eastern city Vladivostok, an estimated crowd of 3,000 marched. Videos posted on social media showed police charging protesters with batons.

In many cities, demonstrators pelted helmeted riot police with snowballs and in some places tussled in knee-deep snow.

Navalny has traditionally had little pull in Russia's vast regions outside Moscow and previous calls for nationwide protests have previously seen only small crowds of a few hundred in most of the large regional cities. The marches on Saturday appeared larger than usual.
© Natalia Kolesnikova/AFP via Getty Images People attend a rally in support of jailed opposition leader Alexey Navalny in downtown Moscow on Jan. 23, 2021.

Ahead of the protests, authorities launched a wave of arrests, detaining activists at their homes, including several of Navalny's top lieutenants. The prosecutor general's office issued a warning that anyone attending the protests risked arrest, and opened a broad criminal case on charges relating to unauthorized public events.

Navalny's support is strong among students, so universities and schools warned against attending, threatening expulsion.

Navalny is Russia's best-known opposition leader and is viewed as president Vladimir Putin's most troublesome political opponent. He has built a grassroots movement, galvanized by his investigations into alleged acts of corruption among powerful officials and businessmen close to Putin.

This week, a day after Navalny was jailed, his team released a new film claiming to lift the lid of an extravagant secret palace built by Putin on the Black Sea coast close to the city of Sochi. The film, which Navalny said is based on leaked blueprints, describes the interior of the palace, alleging it contains a personal casino, amphitheater, vineyard and even an underground hockey rink for Putin.
© Reuters People attend a rally in support of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Moscow, Russia Jan. 23, 2021.

Navalny is currently in a jail in Moscow. He was detained at the airport almost immediately upon his arrival in Moscow last Sunday from Germany, where he had been recovering from the nerve agent poisoning that nearly killed him. He was then ordered to stay behind bars for at least 30 days by a makeshift court set up inside a police station, and could be sentenced to years in prison at a parole hearing later this month, on Jan. 29.

Police detained Navalny for allegedly violating the terms of a suspended sentence from 2014, when he was found guilty of embezzlement in a trial that the European Court of Human Rights later ruled was unjust. Russia's prison service has requested that his three and a half-year sentence be converted into real prison time.

Though Navalny has been jailed before over his activism, he has never been imprisoned long, most observers believe because the Kremlin has never wanted to risk the political fallout.
© Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters A law enforcement officer detains a woman during a rally in support of jailed Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny in Moscow, Jan. 23, 2021.

But following Navalny's poisoning, some observers believe that calculus may well have changed.Navalny says Russian agent accidentally admitted to poisoning him

The Kremlin has denied any involvement in Navalny's murder attempt, but an investigation by the independent group Bellingcat in December claimed it had found evidence identifying an alleged hit squad from Russia's domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service or FSB, that trailed Navalny for years and was present in Siberia when he fell sick in August. Navalny himself has published audio from a phone call with one of the alleged team members, in which the agent appears to unwittingly acknowledge the plot.

Navalny on Friday released a statement from jail via his lawyers in which he said he was feeling well and if anything were to suddenly happen to him while in jail, it should be treated as foul play.

"Just in case, I declare: My plans don't include hanging myself on a prison's window bars, or open my veins or cut my throat with a sharpened spoon," Navalny said in the statement posted on Instagram. "I'm being very careful walking downstairs. My blood pressure is measured every day, and it's like a cosmonaut's, so a heart attack is excluded."

3,400 arrested at protests demanding Navalny's release


MOSCOW — Russian police arrested more than 3,400 people Saturday in nationwide protests demanding the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin's most prominent foe, according to a group that counts political detentions.
© Provided by The Canadian Press

The protests in scores of cities in temperatures as low as minus-50 C (minus-58 F) highlighted how Navalny has built influence far beyond the political and cultural centres of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In Moscow, an estimated 15,000 demonstrators gathered in and around Pushkin Square in the city centre, where clashes with police broke out and demonstrators were roughly dragged off by helmeted riot officers to police buses and detention trucks. Some were beaten with batons.

Navalny’s wife Yulia was among those arrested.


Police eventually pushed demonstrators out of the square. Thousands then regrouped along a wide boulevard about a kilometre (half-mile) away, many of them throwing snowballs at the police before dispersing.

Some later went to protest near the jail where Navalny is held. Police made an undetermined number of arrests there.

The protests stretched across Russia’s vast territory, from the island city of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk north of Japan and the eastern Siberian city of Yakutsk, where temperatures plunged to minus-50 Celsius, to Russia’s more populous European cities. Navalny and his anti-corruption campaign have built an extensive network of support despite official government repression and being routinely ignored by state media.

“The situation is getting worse and worse, it’s total lawlessness," said Andrei Gorkyov, a protester in Moscow. "And if we stay silent, it will go on forever.”

The OVD-Info group, which monitors political arrests, said at least 941 people were detained in Moscow and more than 350 at another large demonstration in St. Petersburg. Overall, it said 3,454 people had been arrested in some 90 cities. Russian police did not provide arrest figures.

Undeterred, Navalny's supporters called for protests again next weekend.

Navalny was arrested on Jan. 17 when he returned to Moscow from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from a severe nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin and which Russian authorities deny. Authorities say his stay in Germany violated terms of a suspended sentence in a 2014 criminal conviction, while Navalny says the conviction was for made-up charges.

The 44-year-old activist is well known nationally for his reports on the corruption that has flourished under President Vladimir Putin's government.

His wide support puts the Kremlin in a strategic bind — risking more protests and criticism from the West if it keeps him in custody but apparently unwilling to back down by letting him go free.

Navalny faces a court hearing in early February to determine whether his sentence in the criminal case for fraud and money-laundering — which Navalny says was politically motivated — is converted to 3 1/2 years behind bars.

Moscow police on Thursday arrested three top Navalny associates, two of whom were later jailed for periods of nine and 10 days.

Navalny fell into a coma while aboard a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow on Aug. 20. He was transferred from a hospital in Siberia to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Soviet-era Novichok nerve agent.

Russian authorities insisted that the doctors who treated Navalny in Siberia before he was airlifted to Germany found no traces of poison and have challenged German officials to provide proof of his poisoning. Russia refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, citing a lack of evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

Last month, Navalny released the recording of a phone call he said he made to a man he described as an alleged member of a group of officers of the Federal Security Service, or FSB, who purportedly poisoned him in August and then tried to cover it up. The FSB dismissed the recording as fake.

Navalny has been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side for a decade, unusually durable in an opposition movement often demoralized by repressions.

He has been jailed repeatedly in connection with protests and twice was convicted of financial misdeeds in cases that he said were politically motivated. He suffered significant eye damage when an assailant threw disinfectant into his face. He was taken from jail to a hospital in 2019 with an illness that authorities said was an allergic reaction but which many suspected was a poisoning.

Daria Litvinova And Jim Heintz, The Associated Press

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