San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Arrest uproar rocks remote eastern region
KHABAROVSK, Russia — Mass rallies roiled the Russian Far East city of Khabarovsk again on Saturday, as tens of thousands took to the streets to protest the arrest of the region’s governor on charges of involvement in multiple murders.
Local media estimated the rally in the city 3,800 miles east of Moscow drew as many as 50,000 people. Hundreds rallied in the city center every day last week against the arrest of Sergei Furgal, reflecting widespread anger over the arrest of the popular governor and a simmering discontent with the Kremlin’s policies.
Furgal, the Khabarovsk region governor, was arrested on July 9 and flown to Moscow where he was put in jail. Russia’s Investigative Committee says he is suspected of involvement in several murders of businessmen in 2004 and 2005.
Furgal has denied the charges, which relate to his time as a businessman with interests ranging from imports of consumer goods to timber and metals. Khabarovsk residents dismissed the charges against him as unsubstantiated and denounced the Kremlin for targeting a governor they elected.
“People are fed up with the way we are treated, that they (authorities) can simply take away our choice,” said Mikhail Yerashchenko, one of the protesters. A member of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party, Furgal was elected governor in 2018, defeating the Kremlinbacked incumbent. His victory was unexpected: Furgal didn’t actively campaign and toed the Kremlin’s line, publicly supporting his rival.
People voted for him nonetheless, delivering a humiliating blow to the main Kremlin party, United Russia, that has been losing seats in regional administrations over the past two years.
During his two years in office, Furgal earned a reputation as “the people’s governor.” He cut his own salary, ordered the sale of an expensive yacht the previous administration bought, met with protesters when rallies took place and significantly reduced flight fares for residents in remote areas.
“Furgal became a political symbol for the residents of the region, and all accusations — no matter how grave — are from another, nonpolitical dimension,” political analyst Abbas Gallyamov said in a Facebook post.
A week ago, crowds of up to 35,000 people rallied in the city center.
Protesters demanded that Furgal’s trial be moved to Khabarovsk. Some questioned the timing of the arrest, pointing to Furgal’s decadelong stint as a lawmaker in the Russian parliament before running for governor, during which the murder charges never came up.
The protests, unauthorized by authorities, are the largest ever to have taken place in Khabarovsk, a city of 590,000.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov last week called the situation “not standard.”
Smaller rallies in support of Furgal also took place Saturday in KomsomolskonAmur, another big city in the Khabarovsk region, and in the city of Vladivostok in the neighboring Primorye region.
Yulia Khorovenkova and Daria Litvinova are Associated Press writers.