Moscow
Thousands of Russians have been taking part in unauthorised protests to demand the release of the jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny. More than 5,000 people have been detained, a moni-toring group says. In Moscow police closed metro stations and blocked off the city centre. Mr Navalny was jailed on his return to Russia after recovering from an attempt to kill him with a nerve agent.
He blames the security services for the attack but the Kremlin denies this. The opposition figure was arrested after arriving in Moscow from Germany, where he spent months recovering from the near-fatal incident. Mr Navalny has denounced his detention as ‘bla-tantly illegal’, saying the authorities had allowed him to travel to Berlin for treatment for the Novi-chok poisoning, which happened in Russia last Au-gust.
Mr Navalny has blamed state security agents under Mr Putin’s orders for the attempt on his life and investigative journalists have named Russian FSB agents suspected of the poisoning. But the Kremlin denies involvement and disputes the conclusion, by Western weapons experts, that Novichok was used.
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin has denied reports he is the owner of a vast palace on the Black Sea, as alleged by Mr Navalny in a video that has gone viral in Russia and has been watched more than 100m times.
It’s risky protesting in Russia. Even if you escape the police batons you can be fired, face a hefty fine or criminal prosecution. So the fact that people turned out for a second weekend, right across Russia, is significant – the fact that there were fewer than last week, unsurprising.
By blocking off central Moscow, the authorities were trying to prevent a large crowd gathering in one place and so play down the scale of dissent. Instead, they got protesters marching along main city streets to the hoots of passing cars whose pas-sengers waved victory signs in support. Shopkeepers were drawn to their windows to watch and, in one beauty salon, women in hairnets stood filming on their phones as the crowd filed past.
Most protesters I spoke to said they weren’t fans or followers of Alexei Navalny in particular, but they are shocked at how he’s been treated. They de-scribed him as a symbol of resistance and talked of their own desire for change.
None of this means that Vladimir Putin is about to be ousted – he still has significant support. But after two decades in power, the shine has begun to rub off his presidency.—Agencies
