Lodi News-Sentinel

Putin critic jailed as mass rallies energize Russian opposition

- By Henry Meyer

MOSCOW — Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny was jailed for 15 days after the largest anti-government demonstrat­ions for at least five years energized President Vladimir Putin’s critics as presidenti­al elections loom.

Navalny was imprisoned by a Moscow court on Monday after being convicted of disobeying police and fined 20,000 rubles ($352) for organizing an unsanction­ed protest after more than 1,000 people were detained in a wave of demonstrat­ions in cities across Russia on Sunday. Despite draconian laws forbidding unsanction­ed rallies, at least 60,000 took part in more than 80 protests, according to the independen­t Ekho Moskvy radio station.

“You can’t detain tens of thousands of people — yesterday we saw the authoritie­s can only go so far,” Navalny told reporters in the court, where he appeared after being held overnight. “As long as people see tens of billions of dollars being stolen by top officials,” they’ll be ready to protest, he said.

The protests were the largest since demonstrat­ions erupted in winter 2011 and spring 2012 against alleged vote-rigging in parliament­ary elections and Putin’s return to the presidency for a third term. Putin, 64, is likely to seek a further six years as president in elections next March, though he hasn’t officially said he’ll run. Navalny, 40, has said he’ll be a candidate, but the Kremlin insists he’s ineligible because of a fraud conviction that the opposition activist has dismissed as politicall­y motivated.

“This is just the start, and the culminatio­n will be nearer to the presidenti­al elections,” Vladimir Milov, one of the opposition leaders, said in a blog posting Monday. “Now our task is to force them into concession­s.”

The protests were a “provocatio­n” and police acted “absolutely correctly, profession­ally and legally” in dealing with them, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call Monday. Organizers got people to join the demonstrat­ions on the “lie” that they’d been approved by the authoritie­s, he said.

 ?? VALYA EGORSHIN/NURPHOTO ?? Opposition supporters participat­e in an anti-corruption rally in central Saint Petersburg on Sunday.
VALYA EGORSHIN/NURPHOTO Opposition supporters participat­e in an anti-corruption rally in central Saint Petersburg on Sunday.

Newspapers in English

Newspapers from United States