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The supporters of the most prominent critic of President Vladimir Putin, despite the cold, responded to the invitation of his team to go out for 15 minutes on Sunday night with mobile phones on and share photos of the actions on the networks social.
It is still difficult to estimate how many people participated in the protests, but in Russia’s two largest cities, groups of several dozen people gathered to support Navalno.
Protester Alexander Kozokar, one of 50 people who attended the lantern campaign in Manege Square near the Kremlin, said he feared that Russia would turn into a “dictatorship.”
“I’m scared to think about what’s next,” a 28-year-old factory worker in the Moscow suburb of Mytishchi told AFP.
“The country is disappearing”
About 30 people gathered on the playground in the southwestern part of Moscow, some with dogs, some with children. They turned on the flashlights on their phones and made a heart with the Christmas lights on the snowy ground.
Protester Mikhail Orlov said he attended the protest and expressed dissatisfaction with Putin’s policy.
“The country is disappearing, science is disappearing,” the 29-year-old engineer told AFP. Orlov said he had seen like-minded people turn on lights in their windows out of solidarity.
His wife, Mary, said she was beginning to consider whether her family should leave Russia.
“I don’t feel protected here,” she said.
In a thriving district of central Moscow, comedian Garik Oganisian, 28, said he wanted to see political change.
“I don’t like what is happening in this country, how people are being sent to jail in an open and arrogant way for sharing Twitter messages,” he said.
In St. Petersburg, Navaln supporters also gathered in small groups to protest; some of them danced and chanted: “Russia will be free.”
“Love is stronger than fear”
The Navaln team shared photos and videos of similar meetings in cities across the country.
“Love is stronger than fear,” was written on one line in an apartment building in Tomsk, Siberia, in a video.
These actions took place after A. Navalns was sentenced in early February to almost three years in prison for violating the conditions of the probation sentence imposed on him in 2014 in a robbery case.
Reuters / Photo by Scanpix / A. Navaln shows a sign of heart to his wife at trial
Previously, A. Navaln and his lawyers stated that they believe that this Moscow court decision is illegal and will seek its annulment.
Navaln was arrested on January 17 after arriving at a Moscow airport in Germany, where he was being treated for his nerve paralyzing substance “Novičiok” after a poisoning last summer, of which he accuses the Kremlin and the Federal Service of Security (FSB).
His arrest in many Russian cities sparked mass demonstrations over two consecutive weekends during which more than 10,000 were detained by security forces. people.
Then, Navaln’s team postponed the mass demonstrations until spring or summer, but urged their supporters to take advantage of Valentine’s Day to try new and safer forms of protest.
Moscow accused the opposition of acting on NATO orders and warned that anyone who broke the law would be punished, but police did not intervene in Sunday’s actions.
Women’s solidarity chains
Earlier on Sunday, several hundred women in Moscow and St. Petersburg clashed in live chains to express their support for Navaln’s wife and political prisoners.
Some 300 women gathered on Tea Street in Moscow’s historic center and held up a long white ribbon.
“By forming the chain, we want to show that we are for love and against violence,” Darya Obrazcova, a 22-year-old student in Moscow, told AFP.
In St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, about a hundred women gathered to form a similar chain near the monument to the victims of political repression. Some of them had flowers, while others recited the poems of Anna Akhmatova, one of Russia’s favorite poets.
These new forms of protests in Russia are similar to those of activists in neighboring Belarus.
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