Navalny supporters call for new protests across Russia Russia

Supporters of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for more rallies across the country over the weekend to demand his release after being detained before the trial for offenses he denies.

One of Navalny’s Leading ally, lawyer and politician Lyubov Sobol, told reporters on Tuesday that his anti-corruption movement would continue to work, despite many people being detained after protests swept through Russian cities over the weekend.

While a spate of criminal cases has been launched against those detained by police, a woman who was kicked to the ground by a policeman in St Petersburg emerged as a symbol of the harsh way in which the authorities protesters struck.

The case of Margarita Yudina, 54, has become a national scandal after footage that she was kicked in the stomach by a police officer for asking why the officer and his colleagues detained went viral online.

The video shows Yudina falling on the sidewalk after she was kicked and hit her head hard. Documents from the hospital show that she suffered a concussion and needed stitches on the back of her head.

Although the officer visited her in the hospital and apologized, Yudina told the Novaya Gazeta newspaper on Tuesday that she wanted justice.

“This case should go right,” she said. ‘I therefore intend to appeal to the committee of inquiry and find out who attacked me. I want the person who kicked me to be found, named and punished according to the law. ”

The Kremlin said the “violence” by some protesters was unprecedented and aggressive. The incidents of police violence were much less and are being investigated, it reads.

But Navalny’s supporters were unpleasant, Sobol said, and will continue to demand that he be released, despite arrests of our followers and allies, open criminal investigations (and) criminal investigations yet to come.

She said they are planning planned protest marches on January 31 and February 2, when the court intends to consider motions to convert his suspended sentence into an actual prison sentence.

She added that one of their goals was to stop President Vladimir Putin’s party in the upcoming parliamentary vote.

‘There are many plans and tasks for the near future, [as well as] medium and long term [ones]”And everyone understands what needs to be done tomorrow and a month from now and half a year from now,” Sobol said.

“One of the main objectives is to … destroy the monopoly of United Russia during the parliamentary elections in September.”

The protest against protesters still brought international outrage. The top diplomats of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the High Representative of the European Union, condemned the “politically motivated arrest and detention” of Navalny and said they were “deeply concerned about the detention of thousands of peaceful protesters and journalists. “

Joe Biden expressed concern over the matter when he first spoke to Putin as US president on Tuesday.

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