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- Less than a week after the arrest of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, tens of thousands of his supporters demonstrated across Russia for his release.
- The OWD organization announced that more than 2,600 people in about 100 cities were arrested.
- There were riots with dozens of injured.
- Also in Berlin, around 2000 people took to the streets in Navalny.
“Freedom for Navalny!” and “Putin, uchodi!” – in German: “Putin, get out!” chanted people in dozens of Russian cities. Protests from the country’s far east to Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea were directed against the political persecution of dissidents.
Navalny’s closest colleague, lawyer Lyubov Sobol, was also arrested. In addition, Reuters and AFP news agencies unanimously report that Navalny’s wife, Julia Navalnaya, has also been arrested.
The AFP news agency estimated the number of protesters in Moscow at at least 20,000. Among them were many young people and members of the middle class. Unlike the unauthorized demonstrations of the past, the central Pushkin Square was not cordoned off in large areas.
Passing cars honked their horns in solidarity with the protesters. “I don’t want to live in a Russia like the one we have now,” Irina, 30, told a reporter for the German press agency. “We don’t have democracy.” Later there were clashes with the police in Moscow.
Again police violence in the country
Arrests were also made during protests in the Russian Far East. In the city of Khabarovsk, activists posted videos of police officers beating protesters and putting them into prisoner trucks.
Despite the freezing temperatures, hundreds of protesters gathered in the cities of Barnaul, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Tyumen, Tomsk and Vladivostok. Nawalny’s supporters even spoke out of thousands.
Authorities threaten high fines
In the Siberian city of Tomsk, where Navalny was the victim of an attack with the neurotoxin Novichok in August, people are said to have gathered for the largest unauthorized demonstration in years. “In each region, in each city, citizens take to the streets. Today is an amazing day, ”said a tweet from Tomsk.
The authorities threatened the protesters with heavy fines. Several of Nawalny’s campaign partners were arrested in the run-up to the protests. With reference to the corona pandemic, demonstrations have not been allowed in Russia for months. Human rights activists see this as a pretext to restrict the right to freedom of assembly.
Navalny’s message from prison
Navalny himself reported on the eve of the protests planned from the famous number one preventive prison in Moscow, where he is being held. He did not intend to commit suicide, he wrote on Instagram, probably a cynical allusion to the fact that there have been puzzling deaths at the detention center in the past.
Meanwhile, Russia is resisting interference from outside. The Russian Foreign Ministry criticized the US embassy in Moscow in a message, which had listed several demonstrations scheduled for Saturday with exact meeting points and times. Under the guise of concerns about the safety of US citizens abroad, Washington wants to fuel protests in Russia, criticizes Moscow.
