Russian opposition leader sentenced to 15 days in jail
MOSCOW — The wave of nationwide demonstrations that shook Russia’s long dormant political scene over the weekend showed a new face of protest: Mostly teenage demonstrators driven by accusations of highlevel official corruption, glaring amid the nation’s painful twoyear recession.
A year before facing re-election, President Vladimir Putin has a dilemma: To further tighten the screws or to devise more artful means for keeping a lid on dissent. On Monday, a Moscow court handed a 15-day jail term to the protest organizer, Alexei Navalny, whose charisma and social media savvy helped rally the young.
Navalny was arrested as he walked to a protest in Moscow on Sunday and spent the night in jail before showing up in court. Police have arrested more than 1,000 people for taking part in the unauthorized protest in the capital, and many of them face jail sentences or fines. Navalny’s anticorruption foundation has promised to offer legal assistance to all those who were arrested.
“Even the slightest illusion of fair justice is absent here,” Navalny told reporters Monday from the defendant’s bench, complaining about the judge striking down one motion after another. “Yesterday’s events have shown that quite a large number of voters in Russia support the program of a candidate who stands for fighting corruption. These people demand political representation — and I strive to be their political representative.”
Journalists and well-wishers packed the courtroom in central Moscow, where Navalny, in a selfie posted on Twitter, declared: “A time will come when we’ll put them [the authorities] on trial too — and that time it will be fair.”