Top Opposition Activists Are Arrested in Moscow After Wave of Protests

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/02/world/europe/russia-moscow-opposition-lyubov-sobol.html

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MOSCOW — A Russian lawyer in the forefront of recent street protests in Moscow was arrested Monday evening in the Russian capital, along with a second opposition activist and an elected local councilor in what appeared to be a sweep by the authorities of protest leaders not already in detention.

The arrests in Moscow targeted Lyubov Sobol, a 31-year-old lawyer who works for Russia’s Anti-Corruption Foundation, an independent group led by Aleksei A. Navalny, another anti-corruption campaigner; Nikolai Lyaskin; and Ilya Azar, a journalist with Novaya Gazeta, an independent daily newspaper, and a local councilor.

Ms. Sobol, the most prominent of the activists known to have been picked up on Monday, has been one of the main public faces of a recent wave of protests, including a peaceful march attended by several thousand people that she led on Saturday through the center of Moscow.

Released from provisional arrest after midnight pending a court hearing, Ms. Sobol said on her Twitter account after her release that she had been picked up by police officers as she was leaving a store and accused of taking part in an illegal gathering.

Accusing Moscow’s mayor, Sergei S. Sobyanin, of “trying to frighten me with night arrests,” she said, “I am not afraid and will continue to work against corrupt officials, falsifiers and scoundrels.”

Riot police officers, who cracked down hard on previous protests and detained more than 2,000 people, let Ms. Sobol’s march on Saturday proceed unmolested, raising hopes that the Kremlin might be retreating from its often violent stand against organized displays of public dissent.

But Monday’s detentions in connection with the Saturday rally quashed that idea. They made clear that the Kremlin will not tolerate public gatherings before local elections on Sunday that have not been approved in advance by the government.

Activists had planned to hold an unauthorized march on Tuesday but it was unclear whether it would go ahead.

The recent protests, the biggest display of opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin since a series of demonstrations in 2012, began last month after election officials barred Ms. Sobol and several other opposition candidates from running in an election this coming Sunday for the Moscow City Council.

Ms. Sobol, who last week was sprayed with black slime near her Moscow apartment by an unidentified assailant, has infuriated the authorities by refusing to bow to a campaign of intimidation by the security forces and nominally independent vigilantes against herself and her family.

As the mother of a 5-year-old daughter, she cannot be sentenced to jail under Russian law, which bars the imprisonment of mothers with children under the age of 14. But she has been repeatedly fined and taken in for lengthy questioning.

Her boss, Mr. Navalny, 43, is Russia’s highest-profile opposition figure but he has stood aside from the most recent protests after being released from jail late last month. He does not appear to have been detained on Monday.