Riot police face protesters during a demonstration in support of Navalny in downtown Moscow on 23 January.
Photographer: Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP / Getty Images
Photographer: Natalia Kolesnikova / AFP / Getty Images
Lyudmila Shtein, a 24-year-old Muscovite and municipal deputy, has been under house arrest until May and is serving a two-year prison sentence for encouraging people to join a protest last month. In the past two weeks, she has been among more than 11,000 people assembled after the biggest challenge to President Vladimir Putin in years.
As social media has been flooded with reports of police brutality, including beatings, a The suppression of the Kremlin has for the time being succeeded in stopping the unrest caused by the imprisonment of opposition leader Alexey Navalny. No demonstrations are planned before spring, but after more than two decades in power, Putin has not eradicated the threat to his rule.
“If we continue to protest every weekend, only thousands more will be detained and hundreds beaten, and the work of our campaign offices will be paralyzed and we will not be able to prepare for the election.” Navalny ally Leonid Volkov, who is out of the country and wanted by Russian authorities. “It’s not what we want and it’s not what Alexey asked us to do,” he told TV Rain.
Putin, 68, is digging in while Navalny seeks to promote dissatisfaction fueled by years of declining living standards and the recession caused by the Coronavirus pandemic. Navalny, an anti-corruption activist, has a a series of expositions directed by Putin and his inner circle and in the process built up a following of millions.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets two weekends in a row in dozens of cities across Russia, sounding the alarm and provoking them. a violent reaction by authorities, accusing Navalny of collaborating with foreign governments to try to destabilize the regime.
Navalny has garnered the most support from any opposition politician in Russia, “although his constituency remains rather narrow at the moment,” said Mikhail Dmitriev, an economist who correctly predicted the biggest anti-Putin protests a decade ago. .
For now, the majority of Russians are dealing with the need to survive, but as the economic situation stabilizes, ‘the demand for political rights and freedoms and the rule of law will grow’, and more people may be willing to confront the authorities. . said.
Navalny (44) was detained as he arrived in Germany in mid-January, where he was recovering from a nervous breakdown that he said was Putin’s attempt to kill him. The Kremlin denies any role in the poisoning. Navalny is now Russia’s most notorious prisoner. A court in Moscow on February 2 sentenced him to two years and eight months for violating the probation conditions of a suspended sentence in 2014, including when he recovered from a coma in Berlin.
Russian investigators are also prosecuting many of Navalny’s associates and have warned that they could charge him with further offenses related to other fraud allegations that could add another ten years to punishment.
International criticism
Due to international criticism, Russia rejected US and European calls to liberate Navalny, despite the risk of new sanctions, and Friday suspended three diplomats from Germany, Poland and Sweden for attending the marches.
While the waves of protests also caused mass arrests and prosecutions, the authorities were more ruthless this time.
Putin, poison and the importance of Alexey Navalny: QuickTake
Lawyers say they have no access to detainees, protesters spent hours in police cars, confiscated food, water and even heat, and photos posted on social media showed people being pushed into cells with open latrines and beds containing metal frames and no mattress.
Aliona Kitaeva, a volunteer who works at a Navalny assistant, said police put a plastic bag on her head, pushed her around and threatened electric shocks to force her to give the password to her cellphone. Four officers were in the cell that had no surveillance camera, she said.
Navalny was escorted from a police station in Khimki, Russia, on January 18.
Photographer: Alexander Nemenov / AFP / Getty Images
“I have been subjected to physical and psychological abuse: it amounts to torture,” she told Time Time TV just before being led to serve a 12-day sentence for participating in a protest without approval.
Putin’s tactics may intimidate the opposition in the near future, but Navalny in prison will become a powerful symbol of resistance, says Gleb Pavlovsky, a political consultant who worked for the Kremlin until 2011.
Risks for Putin
“In the short term, the risks for the Kremlin are not great, but it could be very important if Navalny becomes a constant trigger for protests against Putin,” Pavlovsky said. “He will not disappear completely and will still play an important role.”
With his return from Germany despite the threat of arrest, Navalny may have also increased Putin’s plans for his eventual exit from the presidency because, according to Pavlovsky, it would now be too risky.
According to opposition figures alone, Putin will not be threatened, whose biggest challenge is to keep his entourage loyal, according to Olga Kryshtanovskaya, a sociologist at the State University of Management who has studied Russia’s elite for the past three decades.
“The two sides are so unequal that the only thing that can bring about change is an internal coup,” she said.
– Assisted by Evgenia Pismennaya