‘Merciless’ Russia faces threat of more sanctions from EU
THE European Union’s top diplomat has said Russia’s government was increasingly authoritarian and showed no tolerance of democratic rule of law, warning that a new round of sanctions was a possibility.
“They are merciless,” EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell told the European Parliament after visiting Moscow last week to plead for the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.
“The current power structure in Russia, combining vested economic interests, military and political control, leave no opening for democratic rule of law.”
Meanwhile a top ally of Mr Navalny, Leonid Volkov, has urged residents of big cities to gather in residential courtyards on Sunday evening with their mobile phone torches on.
Mr Volkov said the protest would start at 8pm local time and last for 15 minutes.
He wrote in a Facebook post that the new rally format – similar to the tactics opposition supporters employed during protests in neighbouring Belarus – could prevent Russian police from interfering and allow anyone to participate.
The protest will coincide with Valentine’s Day.
“You will raise your phone flashlights – and someone, maybe, will bring candles – and form a heart shape with them... You will take a picture of it from above, from one of the apartments, and post it on Instagram. Let’s have social media feeds filled with thousands of shining hearts from dozens of Russian cities,” Mr Volkov wrote. “No OMON (riot police), no fear.”
Mr Navalny (44), an anti-corruption investigator and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic, was arrested on January 17 when returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusation.
His arrest and jailing sparked nationwide protests, with tens of thousands of people rallying across Russia for two weekends in a row in the largest outpouring of discontent in years.
The Russian authorities responded with a harsh crackdown.
More than 11,000 people have been detained and hundreds have been handed jail terms. Several of Mr Navalny’s close allies face criminal charges and are under house arrest.
Last week, a Moscow court ruled that while Mr Navalny was recovering in Germany, he violated the probation terms of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money laundering conviction and ordered him to serve two years and eight months in prison.
Even before that ruling, Mr Navalny rejected the 2014 conviction as political persecution and the European Court of Human Rights called it “arbitrary and manifestly unreasonable”.
In the wake of the heavy police crackdown, Mr Volkov said that protests should pause until spring, as trying to maintain rallies every weekend would only lead to many more arrests.
However, yesterday he cited the need to “adopt something that is stronger than fear” of repressions and to hold a demonstration that police would not be able to derail.
Mr Volkov wrote: “We have already become the majority, but Putin divides us by (riot police) cordons so that we can’t see each other and see how many of us there are. We need to find a way to overcome that.”
Asked whether the opposition’s call to gather in courtyards can be considered unlawful, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said it was “hard to say”, but assured reporters that if someone in Russia violated the law, they would be held accountable by law enforcement.
More than 11,000 people have been detained and hundreds jailed