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Thousands of Russians, armed with blue underpants and toilet brushes, symbols of their discontent, have become Vladimir Putin’s biggest headache in decades. They came out again this weekend against the arrest of Alexei Navalny, a well-known anti-corruption activist. The protests resulted in at least 4,500 arrests in more than 60 cities on Sunday alone, according to Russian media, including Navalny’s own wife, Yulia, who was detained in Moscow.
Behind the discontent is the poisoning of Navalny, 44, who spent months between life and death in a German hospital in August. She was the victim of a novichok, a nerve agent known as the favorite of Russian secrets, who will have been placed in her underwear, hence the blue underwear.
The activist, who was on probation on fraud charges, missed the deadline to appear in Russian justice and ended up being arrested upon his return to Russia. But not before releasing a documentary titled Putin’s Palace. The story of the largest bribery in the world, about a monumental mansion on the Black Sea coast, valued at more than one billion euros. Among the items listed, many Russians did not fail to notice a luxury toilet brush, worth 700 euros, hence the protests about the toilet brush in hand.
However, Putin has denied ownership of the palace, declaring that one of his childhood friends, oligarch Arkady Rotenberg, is the true owner. But many have doubts that Arkady is more than an iron man, and tensions are mounting, after more than 93 million people have watched the documentary in recent weeks.
On Sunday in Moscow, the discontents even had the temerity to call protests in front of Russia’s secret silk door, the FSB. The riot police did not tolerate it, quickly charged into the crowd, dispersing the protesters and chasing them around the city.
Some tried to fight back by throwing snowballs, amid the cold Russian winter, others formed desperate human chains, while watching their companions being dragged en masse into police vans.
On Tik Tok, a popular app for teens, videos of protesters chanting “I’m going to end up in prison” have gone viral. And many were, some for something as simple as building snowmen, with a message like “Down with the czar,” said AFP.
Tide of protests For Navalny to challenge the all-powerful Putin, who remains a very popular figure in Russia, is nothing new. What has changed is the scale of the demonstrations for his release, which have brought together the fragmented and persecuted opposition to the Russian president. These protests mount a wave that has been noticed since the municipal elections in the capital, in 2019, when the opposition made substantial progress, after large protests against the exclusion of several of its candidates.
As for Navalny, “the Kremlin has always insisted on minimizing his importance and popularity with the public,” the Moscow Times said; in fact, Putin has always refused to pronounce the name of his opponent, so as not to legitimize him.
“On the contrary, his admirers in the West routinely exaggerate his importance in Russian politics, overestimating his support,” the independent newspaper added. Noting that the polls at the Levada Center, the only Russian institute that conducts surveys where the name Navalny appears, always show confidence levels around 4%. With a slight increase in recent months, especially among white-collar professionals and entrepreneurs.
