MOSCOW (Reuters) – Police in riot gear stormed a rally on Saturday, removing more than 200 people from the Far East and Siberia, protesting against bitter cold and a government crackdown on the release of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. too late.
Navalny urged his supporters to protest after he was arrested last weekend when he returned to Germany from Germany after being poisoned by a military nerve agent in August.
Video footage of Vladivostok showed riot police chasing a group of protesters in the street, while protesters in Khabarovsk braved the temperature of about -14 Celsius (7 degrees Fahrenheit), “Shame!” and “Bandits!”
Police in the Siberian city of Yakutsk grabbed a protester by the arms and legs and dragged him in a van, video footage of the scene showed.
The OVD Info monitoring group said 238 people, including 56 in Novosibirsk, had been detained at the rallies so far.
In Moscow, police set up roadblocks around Pushkinskaya Square while workers were re-tiling it, an apparent attempt to stem a protest that would begin at 1100 GMT.
Police also detained several people who had gathered on the square in front of the demonstration, including an all-maker.
Navalny, a former lawyer who accused President Vladimir Putin of ordering his assassination, could face years in prison for lawsuits he calls a trump card. Putin denies involvement.
Navalny’s supporters hope that despite the winter conditions and the coronavirus pandemic, they can provide a tone of street support against the Kremlin to pressure the authorities to free him.
The West has urged Moscow to let him go, causing new tensions in the already tense Russia ties while US President Joe Biden begins his government.
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Navalny’s team released a video of a lavish Black Sea palace belonging to Putin, which the Kremlin has denied. As of Saturday, the track has been viewed more than 65 million times.
Authorities banned the protests in advance. The police in the run-up to the rallies devoid of many of Navalny’s allies who accused them that they asked illegal protests, compiled and at least two of them, including Navalny’s spokeswoman any longer imposed as a prison.
Navalny’s allies hoping to take advantage of what polls say are heightened public frustrations over years of declining wages and economic downturn from the pandemic. But Putin’s grip on power seems indisputable, and the 68-year-old president regularly signs an approval rating of more than 60 percent, many times higher than that of Navalny.
The US embassy published the locations and times of the protests and told Americans to stay away. The Russian Foreign Ministry calls it a “gross interference” in the country’s internal affairs.