Wave of corruption protests sweeps Russia
Hundreds arrested in biggest show of defiance since 2012
MOSCOW— Russia’s opposition, often written off by critics as a small and irrelevant coterie of privileged urbanites, put on an impressive nationwide show of strength Sunday with scores of protest rallies spanning the vast country.
Hundreds were arrested, including Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic.
The protests, nominally against corruption but also a rare show of public dissent against Putin, were the biggest show of defiance since the 2011-12 wave of demonstrations that rattled the Kremlin and led to harsh new laws aimed at suppressing opposition. Almost all of Sunday’s rallies were unsanctioned, but thousands braved the prospect of arrests to gather in cities from the Far East port of Vladivostok to the “window on the West” of St. Petersburg.
An organization that monitors Russian political repression, OVD-Info, said it counted more than 1,000 people arrested in the Moscow demonstrations alone. That number could not be confirmed and state news agency Tass cited Moscow police as saying there were about 500 arrests.
Navalny, who was arrested while walking from a nearby subway station to the demonstration at Moscow’s iconic Pushkin Square, was the driving force of the demonstrations. He called for them after his Foundation for Fighting Corruption published a report contending that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has amassed a collection of mansions, yachts and vineyards.
Protesters tried to prevent a police van from taking Navalny away and chanted: “This is our city.”
Others shouted, “Russia without Putin,” and held up pieces of paper denouncing the Russian president and his allies as thieves.
In a Twitter post, Navalny urged his followers to continue with the demonstration. “Guys, I’m okay,” he wrote. “No need to fight to get me out. Walk along Tverskaya. Our topic of the day is the fight against corruption.”
Navalny is a persistent thorn in the Kremlin’s side. He has served several short jail terms after arrests in previ- ous protests and has twice been convicted in a fraud case but given a suspended sentence.
He intends to run for president in 2018 — Putin is widely expected to run for another term — even though the conviction technically disqualifies him.
Putin has dominated Russian political life, as president or prime minister, since 2000.
No overall figures on arrests or protest attendance were available. Police estimated the Moscow crowd at about 7,000, but it could have been larger. The one-hectare Pushkin Square was densely crowded, as were sidewalks on the adjacent Tverskaya St.
In St. Petersburg, about 5,000 protesters assembled in the Mars Field park, shouting slogans including “Putin resign!” and “Down with the thieves in the Kremlin!” With files from the New York Times