Russian opposition leader arrested at anti-Putin protest
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and hundreds of anti-Kremlin activists were detained by police yesterday during street protests against Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration for a fourth term as president.
Mr Navalny had called for demonstrations in 90 towns and cities across Russia against what he has called Mr Putin’s “tsar-like rule”.
“We will force the authorities, made up of swindlers and thieves, to take into account the millions of citizens who did not vote for Putin,” Mr Navalny said beforehand.
Mr Putin won a landslide re-election victory in March, extending his grip over the world’s largest country for another six years, making him the longest-serving leader since Soviet dictator Josef Stalin, who ruled for nearly 30 years.
Mr Navalny, who was barred from running in the election on what he calls a false pretext, was detained soon after showing up at Moscow’s Pushkin Square, where young people chanted “Russia without Putin”, and “Down with the Tsar”.
Five policemen hauled him by his arms and legs to a van in a scene repeated dozens of times with his supporters. Moscow police said he had been detained for organising an unsanctioned rally.
Mr Navalny, who has been detained and jailed several times for organising similar protests, had managed to address his supporters briefly, saying he was glad they had shown up.
One protester in Moscow said: “I have the feeling that people are gathering just to let off steam and that nothing will change.”
OVD Info, a rights organisation that monitors detentions, said it had received reports of police holding almost 600 people across Russia. It said that at the Moscow protest, pro-Kremlin Cossacks had beaten protesters with leather whips, sparking a fight.
A police spokesman said about 1,500 people had protested in Moscow, the Interfax news agency reported. Reuters reporters estimated the crowd at several thousand.
Protests also took place in the Far East, Siberia and St
Alexei Navalny called for protests in more than 90 towns and cities across Russia
Petersburg. More than 1,000 people turned up at a rally in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, about 1,500 kilometres east of Moscow.
Mr Putin, 65, has been in power, either as president or prime minister, since 2000.
The authorities regard most of the protests as illegal, arguing that they were not approved and that police have a duty to protect public order.
Mr Putin has dismissed Mr Navalny as a troublemaker bent on sowing chaos on behalf of Washington.
Critics such as Mr Navalny accuse Mr Putin of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of annexing Ukraine’s Crimea illegally in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.