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Alexei Navalny ‘detained’ at anti-Putin election protest Alexei Navalny ‘detained’ at anti-Putin election protest
(35 minutes later)
The Russian opposition leader’s offices were raided by police ahead of countrywide rallies Police seize Russian opposition leader at rally calling for boycott of March presidential elections
Marc Bennetts and agencies in MoscowMarc Bennetts and agencies in Moscow
Sun 28 Jan 2018 10.56 GMTSun 28 Jan 2018 10.56 GMT
First published on Sun 28 Jan 2018 07.11 GMTFirst published on Sun 28 Jan 2018 07.11 GMT
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The Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was detained by police shortly after joining a rally in Moscow on Sunday. The Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny and 15 others have been arrested in Moscow after he attempted to lead a protest before presidential elections that are expected to return Vladimir Putin to power for another six years.
Surrounded by supporters, the 41-year-old chanted “swindlers and thieves” before being held by officers in the city centre amid a heavy police presence. Navalny, 41, was wrestled to the ground by officers as he walked up Tverskaya, Moscow’s main thoroughfare. Amid chaotic scenes, police with truncheons fought off supporters who attempted to pull him free.
Video posted online showed Navalny walking on Tverskaya Street, a few hundred metres from the Kremlin, to join between 3,000 and 4,000 supporters taking part in the protest, which authorities had said was illegal. His arrest came shortly after police had forced their way into his headquarters in Moscow in an apparent attempt to disrupt an online broadcast of nationwide opposition rallies. Police said they were looking for a bomb.
He had only walked a short distance when he was surrounded by helmeted police officers. The video showed them grabbing him and forcing him to the pavement, then dragging him feet first into a patrol wagon. “I have been detained,” Navalny, an anti-corruption campaigner with a large social media following, tweeted from a police van. “This means nothing. You are not rallying for me, but for yourselves and your future.”
Navalny had called for rallies on Sunday in support of an opposition boycott of March’s elections. The Kremlin critic is barred from standing for public office after being convicted on fraud charges that he says were trumped up to prevent him challenging Putin at the ballot box.
Задержание одного человека теряет малейший смысл, если нас много. Кто-нибудь, придите и замените меня pic.twitter.com/TODVdF5lEmЗадержание одного человека теряет малейший смысл, если нас много. Кто-нибудь, придите и замените меня pic.twitter.com/TODVdF5lEm
Navalny is expected to be charged with a public order violation, which could see him jailed for 20 days. Authorities in Moscow and St Petersburg, Russia’s two biggest cities, refused to give permission for the protests. In Moscow, about 2,000 people defied bitter cold and a heavy police presence to gather in Pushkin Square, a short walk from the Kremlin.
Navalny had earlier called for protests in dozens of cities on Sunday ahead of the presidential election on 18 March, which his supporters say will be rigged, and is expected to keep Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin until 2024. “Putin is a thief!” protesters chanted. “Six more years? No thanks!” read one sign. “These are not elections, if there is no choice. They have stolen our candidate from us,” said Pyotr Kuvshinov, a 20-year-old student.
“Your life is at stake,” Navalny told supporters in a video address released ahead of the rally. “How many more years do you want to live with these thieves, bigots and perverts in power? We’ve already endured this for 18 years.” Youthful opposition members at one point scaled lampposts on the square and unfurled a Russian flag to cheers from the crowd. Protesters later briefly marched towards the Kremlin. Scattered protests continued across Moscow into Sunday night, including outside the White House, the Russian government building.
Navalny has little chance of influencing the election, likely to be won comfortably by Putin, but his ability to use social media to mobilise crowds of mostly young protesters in major cities has irked the Kremlin. “We want to live in a democratic country,” said Vladimir, a 70-year-old academic, who attended the rally in Moscow. “But people in our country have been taught not to think.”
Police broke into Navalny’s headquarters in Moscow on Sunday morning, questioning supporters and attempting to disrupt a live online broadcast of the protests. In St Petersburg, where police cracked down hard on an opposition rally in October on Putin’s 65th birthday, about 2,000 people rallied in the centre of the city. Ten people were arrested.
Roman Rubanov, a Navalny supporter, wrote on social media that the police had said they were looking into reports that there was a bomb in the office, something he said came as a surprise to him. Navalny supporters also rallied in about 100 cities across Russia from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad.
Authorities have refused to grant permission for rallies in Moscow and St Petersburg, raising the prospect of mass arrests. In Cheboksary, central Russia, 50 people were detained, while 45 people were taken into custody at a rally in Ufa, according to OVD-Info, a non-governmental group that tracks the arrests. Other opposition supporters braved temperatures of minus 45C to attend a protest in Yakutsk, northern Siberia.
Fourteen people were arrested at a rally in Kemerovo, a city in western Siberia. Other opposition supporters braved temperatures of -45C to attend a protest in Yakutsk. However, numbers at the rallies were far down on March and June, when Navalny brought tens of thousands of people out on to the streets to protest alleged corruption by Dmitry Medvedev, the prime minister.
Navalny, an anti-corruption lawyer, was jailed three times last year after bringing tens of thousands of people on to the streets for anti-Putin protests. He was also nearly blinded when a pro-Kremlin supporter threw a chemical into his face. Police were also far more restrained, detaining about 250 people nationwide compared with more than 1,000 in June.
Rallies have been planned in more than 100 cities across the country. In most cities, permission to stage rallies was received, Navalny said. Navalny has already served three protest-related jail sentences since March, and he was nearly blinded in one eye last year when a Kremlin supporter with alleged links to the security services threw a chemical in his face.
Navalny warned that authorities planned to clamp down on his youngest supporters, tweeting a screenshot of a text message sent around ahead of the rallies. Although Navalny has massive support among Russian liberals, many opposition members remain suspicious of him because of his links to Russia’s nationalist movement. “I’m here because I hate Putin, not because I like Navalny,” said Yulia, a middle-aged protester in Moscow.
The message urged parents to make sure their children did not attend the Sunday protests. “Raids are possible,” it said. Navalny says Putin is afraid to face genuine challengers at elections, and accuses the Kremlin of handpicking and approving rival candidates. Although Navalny is polling at about 2%, his supporters say an election campaign would have allowed him to capitalise on growing discontent over corruption and rising poverty.
Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, warned that unsanctioned rallies would lead to “certain consequences”. There is precedent for this: Navalny unexpectedly took almost 30% of the vote at Moscow’s mayoral elections in 2014, securing second place and almost forcing the Kremlin’s candidate into an embarrassing run-off.
Navalny – seen as the only politician with enough stamina to take on Putin – has built a robust protest movement despite constant police harassment, tapping into the anger of a younger generation yearning for change. Sunday’s rallies are unlikely to set alarm bells ringing in the Kremlin, which is keen to present a positive image of Russia before this year’s World Cup. They also present Navalny with the challenge of rejuvenating his protest movement before March’s elections.
He says the upcoming election will be little more than a coronation of Putin, who is widely expected to win a fourth presidential term and extend his power until 2024. “Navalny has done a very important thing – he has returned politics to Russia,” said Gleb Pavlovsky, a former Kremlin spin doctor who now supports the opposition, in an interview before the rallies. “But Navalny has a big problem – he is unable to capitalise on his success.”
In 2017, Navalny mounted a forceful bid to run for president but officials ruled him ineligible due to a criminal conviction that he says is politically motivated.
Navalny has said he will use the full force of his campaign – including more than 200,000 volunteers – to organise “voters’ strikes” and encourage Russians to stay away from polling stations on election day.
Alexei NavalnyAlexei Navalny
RussiaRussia
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