Navalny’s supporters call on Russians to protest in the streets

MOSCOW — The stakes keep getting higher in Russian President Vladimir Putin’s standoff with his most prominent critic, Alexei Navalny.

With Navalny lying gravely ill in a prison hospital, his opposition movement has called on followers to take to the streets Wednesday to protest his treatment in a notorious penal colony. The Kremlin has responded with a show of elaborate disdain, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov declaring Monday that Putin doesn’t concern himself with the health of “this prisoner.”

The Navalny case has become an international cause celebre. The 44-yearold activist, who narrowly survived a poisoning last year with a military-grade nerve agent — his movement blamed the Russian security services, while the government denied any involvement — is imprisoned for parole violations in connection with a 2014 fraud conviction that his backers describe as politically motivated.

The Biden administration has joined other Western governments, human rights groups and many internationally known artists in demanding his immediate release. Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said over the weekend there would be “consequences” if Navalny dies in custody, which his relatives and lawyers say is an imminent danger.

Among his compatriots, there’s a complex mix of sentiments about the situation. Some Russians are indifferent to Navalny’s fate and supportive of Putin; others view his anti-corruption cause favorably but question his movement’s tactics and leadership; many more are mindful of the heavy-handed police tactics at pro-Navalny demonstrations that swept the country in January.

“I’m scared to go to protests now,” said Denis Pronkin, a 26-year-old tech company executive in Moscow, citing mass arrests and widely viewed images of police violently pummeling demonstrators during the earlier unrest.

But he said he would join Wednesday’s demonstrations anyway.