5,100 people detained in Russia-wide protests
MOSCOW — Chanting slogans against President Vladimir Putin, tens of thousands of people took to the streets Sunday across Russia to demand the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, keeping up nationwide protests that have rattled the Kremlin.
More than 5,100 people were detained by police, according to a monitoring group, and some were beaten.
The protests came despite efforts by Russian authorities to stem the tide of demonstrations after tens of thousands of people rallied across the country the previous weekend in the largest, most widespread show of discontent that Russia had seen in years. Despite the authorities’ threats of jail terms, warnings to social media groups and tight police cordons, the protests again engulfed cities across Russia’s 11 time zones.
Navalny’s team quickly
called for another protest in Moscow on Tuesday, when he is set to face a court hearing that could send him to prison for years.
The 44-year-old Navalny, an anti-corruption investigator who is Putin’s best-known critic, was arrested Jan. 17 upon returning from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations. He was arrested on allegations of violating his parole conditions by not reporting for meetings with law enforcement authorities when he was recuperating in Germany.
The United States urged Russia to release Navalny and criticized the crackdown on protests.
“The U.S. condemns the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for a second week straight,” U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Twitter.
The Russian Foreign Ministry rejected Blinken’s call as “crude interference in Russia’s internal affairs” and accused Washington of trying to destabilize the situation in the country by backing the protests.
People rallied for Navalny on the ice of a Pacific bay and in thousands in cities from Siberia to the Ural Mountains to St. Petersburg. In Moscow, protesters evaded a warren of checkpoints and lines of riot police officers to march in a column toward the prison where Navalny is being held, chanting, “All for one and one for all.”
On Sunday, police detained more than 5,100 people in cities nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a group that monitors political arrests, surpassing the 4,000 detentions reported at demonstrations across Russia on Jan. 23.
In Moscow, authorities introduced unprecedented security measures in the city center, closing subway stations near the Kremlin, cutting bus traffic and ordering restaurants and stores to stay closed. But the show of force failed to smother the unrest.
Navalny’s team initially called for Sunday’s protest to be held on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square, home to the main headquarters of the Federal Security Service, which Navalny contends was responsible for his poisoning. Facing police cordons around the square, the protest shifted to other central squares and streets.
Officers were randomly picking up people and putting them into police buses, but thousands of protesters marched across the city center for hours, chanting “Putin, resign” and “Putin, thief” — a reference to an opulent Black Sea estate reportedly built for the Russian leader that was featured in a widely popular video released by Navalny’s team.
At one point, crowds of demonstrators walked toward the Matrosskaya Tishina prison where Navalny is being held. They were met by phalanxes of riot police who pushed the marchers back and chased them through courtyards. Demonstrators continued to march around the Russian capital, zigzagging around police cordons. Officers broke them into smaller groups and detained scores of people, beating some with clubs and occasionally using stun guns.
NATIONWIDE PROTESTS
More than 1,600 people were detained in Moscow, including Navalny’s wife, Yulia, who was released after several hours pending a court hearing today on charges of taking part in an unsanctioned protest. Amnesty International said authorities in Moscow have arrested so many people that the city’s detention facilities have run out of space.
“The Kremlin is waging a war on the human rights of people in Russia, stifling protesters’ calls for freedom and change,” Natalia Zviagina, head of the group’s Moscow office, said in a statement.
Several thousand people marched across Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, while chanting, “Down with the czar.” Occasional scuffles broke out as some demonstrators pushed back police who tried to make detentions. More than 1,100 people were arrested, and police used stun guns and batons to corral and detain protesters.
In Chelyabinsk, more than 1,000 miles east of Moscow, one man shouted that he couldn’t breathe as security forces pinned him to the ground.
Seven thousand people turned out in Yekaterinburg, near the Ural Mountains, which was more than the previous weekend’s turnout. Protesters in the Far East city of Vladivostok danced in a large circle over the frozen Amur Bay and chanted: “My Russia is in prison.”
Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde, who chairs the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, condemned “the excessive use of force by authorities and mass detention of peaceful protesters and journalists” and urged Russia “to release all those unjustly detained, including Navalny.”
But the show of force Sunday made it clear that Putin has no plans to back down.
As part of a multipronged effort by authorities to block the protests, courts have jailed Navalny’s associates and activists across the country over the past week. His brother Oleg, top aide Lyubov Sobol and three other people were put under a two-month house arrest Friday on charges of violating coronavirus restrictions during the previous weekend’s protests.
Prosecutors also demanded that social media platforms block calls to join the protests.
The Interior Ministry issued stern warnings to the public, saying protesters could be charged with taking part in mass riots, which carries a prison sentence of up to eight years.
GROWING DISCONTENT
Russia has seen extensive corruption during Putin’s time in office while poverty has remained widespread. Putin has faced growing discontent in the general public for several years amid a decline in real incomes and the dissipation of the patriotic fervor that accompanied his annexation of Crimea in 2014.
“All of us feel pinched financially, so people who take to the streets today feel angry,” said Vladimir Perminov, who protested in Moscow. “The government’s rotation is necessary.”
Demonstrators in Moscow chanted “Aqua discotheque” — a reference to one of the fancy amenities at the contentious Black Sea residence, which also features a casino and a hookah lounge equipped for watching pole dances.
Putin says neither he nor any of his close relatives own the property. On Saturday, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, a longtime Putin confidant and his occasional judo sparring partner, claimed that he is the owner the property.
Navalny has long been the Kremlin’s loudest critic, and he accused Putin of trying to kill him in a nerve-agent attack last summer.
Navalny fell into a coma on Aug. 20 while on a flight from Siberia to Moscow, and the pilot diverted the plane so he could be treated in the city of Omsk. He was transferred to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, established that he was exposed to the Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal inquiry, claiming lack of evidence that he was poisoned.
Navalny was arrested immediately upon his return to Russia last month and jailed for 30 days at the request of Russia’s prison service, which alleged he had violated the probation of his suspended sentence from a 2014 money-laundering conviction that he has rejected as political revenge.
On Thursday, a Moscow court rejected Navalny’s appeal to be released, and the hearing Tuesday could turn his 3½-year suspended sentence into one he must serve in prison.
Navalny’s allies — some of whom helped steer the rallies from outside the country via Twitter, Telegram and YouTube — declared Sunday’s demonstrations a success and have called for the protest outside the courthouse Tuesday.
Information for this article was contributed by Jim Heintz and Vladimir Isachenkov of The Associated Press; by Isabelle Khurshudyan, Robyn Dixon, Natalia Abbakumova and Katya Korobotsova of The Washington Post; and by Anton Troianovski, Andrew E. Kramer, Ivan Nechepurenko and Andrew Higgins of The New York Times.