Anti-Putin protests see hundreds arrested
Opposition leader Navalny among hundreds arrested
MOSCOW • Minutes before the appointed hour, it seemed as if Sunday’s antiPutin protests would prove to be a dud. In central Moscow, the biggest spectacle was a man dressed up as Josef Stalin. In polar Murmansk, just a handful of people milled about under a giant New Year’s tree while children played nearby.
But in the ensuing minutes, as the crowds swelled, reporters in the capital and above the Arctic Circle witnessed what makes opposition politician Alexei Navalny a force in modern Russia: his ability to mobilize thousands of people across the country into risking arrest to oppose President Vladimir Putin.
Navalny’s opposition movement, which grew out of his internet-driven anticorruption campaign, may still be far too weak to pose a real threat to the Putin government. But it’s virtually the only one that can turn out street protests, not just in Moscow but in remote reaches of Russia’s 11 time zones.
Navalny, the Russian opposition leader, was arrested Sunday along with hundreds of protesters at rallies calling for a boycott of the presidential election in March. Navalny called the rallies after he was barred from running against Putin because of an embezzlement conviction, which the European Court of Human Rights ruled was unfair.
Police arrested Navalny soon after he arrived at the rally in Moscow Sunday afternoon. As he walked down Tverskaya Street toward the Kremlin, officers grabbed him and threw him to the ground, then dragged him into a waiting police van.
He has been charged with violating demonstration rules and could face a month-long jail term.
As the crowd grew in Moscow, walking out of the subway stop where the protests were held meant walking into a mass of bodies at the top step. Perhaps emboldened by the numbers, some people climbed up lampposts to help organize chants.
As a police announcement intoned that walkways had to be kept clear, protesters shouted, “Putin’s War,” “Protest” and “Boycott.” They called for Navalny to be freed after his detention earlier.
The crowd was mostly a young one. People seemed resigned that this one protest likely wouldn’t lead to any immediate change, but some voiced optimism that a series of protests might.
Putin, who has been in power since 2000, has high approval ratings and is expected to easily win another six-year term against several candidates offering only a weak challenge. However, surveys predicting a record low turnout have worried the Kremlin. Authorities refused to approve the demonstrations in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Navalny told The Daily Telegraph in an interview this month that the boycott would “strike an additional blow to the legitimacy of the regime and Putin.”
In Murmansk, a port city more than 250 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle, more than 100 people protested despite repeated obstacles: The authorities had refused to permit their protest in the city centre, seized a delivery of flyers from Moscow and detained the two top local Navalny staffers earlier Sunday.
Police initially tried to talk protesters into leaving the area, even attempting to convince a group of schoolchildren that Navalny was up to no good. Then a white bus pulled up, and police started walking or dragging the protesters into it, one by one.
Violetta Grudina, 28, the local Navalny chapter head, said police had tackled her while she was walking along the street earlier in the day, keeping her from attending the protest. By the end of the day, she said, 25 people had been detained in Murmansk, although all were later released.
“We want a revolution in people’s minds,” Grudina said after she was released, adding that she plans to train election observers for the March 18 presidential vote.