Top Kremlin critic faces court
Navalny one of 1,000 protesters arrested
MOSCOW: Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny was set to appear in court yesterday after he and more than 1,000 other people were arrested at an anti-corruption protest in Moscow.
The United States and the European Union voiced deep concern about the detentions, with the State Department describing them as an “affront to democracy”.
Mr Navalny had called for the protests that swept the country on Sunday after he published a report earlier this month accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of controlling a property empire through a murky network of nonprofit organisations.
The report has been viewed more than 11 million times on YouTube, but so far Mr Medvedev has made no comment on the claims.
As well as Moscow and St Petersburg, a number of provincial cities where protests are rarely seen also held demonstrations, attracting a significant number of minors born during President Vladimir Putin’s 17 years in power.
Police detained Mr Navalny, who has announced plans to run for president in the 2018 election, as he was walking to the protest, putting him in a police minibus. The crowd briefly tried to block it from driving off, shouting “Shame!” and “Let him out!”
“Guys, I am all right, go on along Tverskaya,” Mr Navalny tweeted from the van, referring to Moscow’s main central street.
About 7,000 to 8,000 people demonstrated in the heart of the Russian capital, according to police, making it one of the biggest unauthorised rallies in recent years.
Mr Navalny, who spent the night in police custody, could face up to 15 days in police cells for having called for unsanctioned protests, his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh wrote on Twitter.
About 1,030 people were arrested at the Moscow rally, according OVD-Info, a website that monitors the detention of activists.
The vast majority were released overnight after being fined, while about 120 remained in police custody yesterday, OVD-Info said.
The Interfax news agency said 130 people were arrested in St Petersburg, where about 4,000 people gathered in the city centre. “We’re tired of the lies, we have to do something,” Sergei Timofeyev, a 23-year-old protester in the city, said.
One policeman was hospitalised after suffering a head injury during the Moscow rally, the interior ministry said.
The European Union urged Russia to release the demonstrators “without delay”. An EU spokesman said the police action had “prevented the exercise of basic freedoms of expression” association and peaceful assembly — which are fundamental rights enshrined in the Russian constitution”.
“We call on the Russian authorities to abide fully by the international commitments it has made, including in the Council of Europe ... to uphold these rights and to release without delay the peaceful demonstrators that have been detained.”
US State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the detention of “peaceful protesters, human rights observers, and journalists is an affront to core democratic values”.
“I am proud of those who took to the streets today,” Mr Navalny wrote on Twitter on Sunday. “You are the country’s best people and Russia’s hope for a normal future.”
Thousands of people filled central Pushkin Square, some shouting: “Russia without [President Vladimir] Putin!” Some climbed on to lamp posts and the monument to poet Alexander Pushkin, shouting “impeachment!” Dozens of police vans and rows of riot officers were lined up as a police helicopter hovered overhead.
“We have all seen the movie, it gives specific examples of corruption, and there has been no reaction,” Nikolai Moisey, a 26-year-old factory worker, said of the claims against Mr Medvedev. “They steal and they lie but still people will be patient to the end. The protest is a first push for people to start acting.”
Police officers moved to detain protesters and clear the square, with some using truncheons and pepper spray to disperse the crowd, correspondents said. Police also searched FBK offices over alleged incitement to hatred, and “everyone was detained and brought to the police”, the organisation’s spokeswoman Kira Iarmych said.
Despite the dramatic scenes in Moscow, state TV did not cover the protests.
Liberal business newspaper Vedomosti newspaper said yesterday the protests were reminiscent of the mass anti-government rallies that swept Russia in 2011 over vote-rigging after a parliamentary election, which snowballed into the biggest challenge against Mr Putin since he took power in 2000.
Mr Navalny, a 40-year-old lawyer by training, first announced plans to run for the presidency after he won a surprise 27% of the vote in the Moscow mayoral election in 2013. But he has been the subject of several legal prosecutions in recent years, and in February he was found guilty of embezzlement and given a five-year suspended sentence which could make him ineligible to run in next year’s vote.