NATIONWIDE PROTESTS BRING THOUSANDS TO RUSSIA’S STREETS
Putin’s most prominent critic, 500 others arrested
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 dozens of protest across the vast country.
Hundreds were arrested, including Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critic.
It was the biggest show of defiance since a 2011-2012 wave of demonstrations rattled the Kremlin and led to harsh new laws aimed at suppressing dissent.
Almost all of Sunday’s rallies were unsanctioned, but thousands braved the prospect of arrest 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 800 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 released a report contending that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has amassed a collection of mansions, yachts and vineyards. The Russian people, like people everywhere, deserve a government that supports an open marketplace of ideas, transparent and accountable governance, equal treatment under the law, and the ability to exercise their rights without fear of retribution.
STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESMAN MARK TONER IN CALLING FOR THE RELEASE OF RUSSIAN PROTESTERS
Navalny is a persistent thorn in the Kremlin’s side. He has served several short jail terms after arrests in previous protests and has twice been convicted in a fraud case, but given a suspend- ed sentence.
Even though the conviction technically disqualifies him, he intends to run for president in 2018 — an election in which Putin is widely expected to run for another term. Putin has dominated Russian political life, as president or prime minister, since 2000.
No overall figures on arrests or protest attendance were available. Some Russian state news media gave relatively cursory reports on the demonstrations, while the state news TV channel Rossiya-24 ignored them alto- gether in evening broadcasts.
The US government condemned the arrest of Navalny and of peaceful protesters, calling for their immediate release. Police estimated the Moscow crowd at about 7,000, but it could have been larger. The one-hectare (2.5acre) Pushkin Square was densely crowded as were sidewalks on adjacent Tverskaya Street.
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!” /