Top Navalny allies arrested amid protests

MOSCOW: Two of Alexei Navalny’s closest allies were arrested on Wednesday, their lawyers said, at the start of a planned day of mass protests in support of the jailed Kremlin critic as President Vladimir Putin delivers his state of the union speech.

Lyubov Sobol, one of the faces of Navalny’s popular YouTube channel, and Kira Yarmysh, his spokeswoman, were both detained in Moscow. Navalny, Russia’s leading opposition politician and a thorn in Putin’s side for the past decade, is gravely ill in prison after a three-week hunger strike.