MOSCOW (AP) – When the team of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged people to come out to their courtyards and shine their cellphone flashes in a display of unity, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide protests, the new protest format seemed to some to be a refuge.
But not to the Russian authorities, who are trying to extinguish the enlightened protests planned for Sunday.
Officials accused Navalny’s allies of acting on behalf of NATO. Kremlin-backed TV channels have warned that flashlight marches are part of major uprisings around the world. State news agencies quoted unnamed sources as saying a terrorist group was planning attacks during massacres that were not approved.
The repression attempts represent a change of tactics for the authorities who once tried to weaken Navalny’s influence by eradicating him.
The TV channels controlled by the Kremlin mostly ignored protest marches by Navalny. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never mentioned his most prominent critic by name. State news agencies referred to the politician and anti-corruption investigator as a ‘blogger’ in the rare stories they led and named him.
“Navalny has moved from a person whose name may not be allowed to the most important topic of discussion,” Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny’s Foundations for Fighting Corruption, said in a YouTube video on Friday.
Pevchikh attributed Navalny’s latest exposure to the sudden increase in attention. His foundation’s two-hour-long video alleging that a lavish Black Sea palace was built for Putin through widespread corruption has been viewed more than 111 million times on YouTube since it was posted on January 19.
The video went up two days after Navalny was arrested after returning from Germany to Russia, where he spent five months recovering from the nerve agent poisoning he blames the Kremlin. The Russian government denies involvement and has said it has no evidence that Navalny was poisoned.
While the sensational arrest and subsequent exposure was a double whammy for the authorities, political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov says it no longer makes sense to keep Navalny and his activities off the air to keep him from additional to deprive publicity.
‘The fact that this strategy has changed indicates that the government television audience somehow receives information about Navalny’s activities via other channels, recognizes him, is interested in his work, and in this sense the silence does not make sense. , ”Gallyamov said.
The protests over the past weekend in numerous cities over Navalny’s detention have been the biggest outpouring of popular discontent in years and seem to have toppled the Kremlin.
It is understood, police about 10 000 people were arrested, and many protesters were beaten, while the state media would reduce the scope of the protests.
TV channels broadcast footage of empty squares in cities where protests were announced, claiming that few people showed up. Some reports portrayed the police as polite and subdued, claiming officers helped people with disabilities cross busy streets, handed out face masks to protesters and offered hot tea.
Once the protests were dead and Navalny ally Leonid Volkov announced a break until spring, Kremlin-backed media reported that the grassroots of the grassroots, entitled “Putin is our president”, had begun sweeping the country. The state newspaper Rossiya 24 broadcast videos from various cities of people dancing to patriotic songs and waving Russian flags, describing it as a true expression of support for Putin.
Several independent online stores reported that the instructions to record videos in support of Putin came from the Kremlin and the ruling United Russia party, and that people appearing in some of the recordings were invited under false pretenses.
Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the pro-Putin videos.
After Navalny’s team posted its video about the palace allegedly built for Putin, state channel Rossiya aired its own exposure to Navalny. Anchor Dmitry Kiselev said that while working on the investigation in Germany, Navalny “lived in the luxury he so much despised.”
The reporter sent the alleged luxury lifestyle filmed by the politician abroad in a house that Navalny rented but failed to capture any leading items in the two-story building, with several bedrooms and a small pool.
She points to ‘two couches, a TV, fresh fruit on the table’ in the living room and a kitchen with a coffee machine and describes a bedroom as ‘luxurious’ even though it does not look much different than a room. in a business hotel.
Over the past few days, official media coverage has focused on plans for the flashlight-in-courtyard protest. In reports, Navalny ally Volkov’s social media message is widely quoted accusing him of acting on behalf of his Western handlers, pointing to an online conference with European officials he attended the day before.
The political talk show ’60 Minutes’ devoted almost half an hour to the subject and called the flashlight procession an idea from a textbook on revolutions. It broadcast footage of protesters flashing flashes during the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, the last rallies in Belarus last summer and other uprisings around the world.
On Thursday, state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti, citing anonymous sources, reported that a terrorist group from Syria was training insurgents for possible terrorist attacks in Russian cities ‘in places where there are mass rallies’.
The reports do not refer to specific protests. The public announcement office and the Russian Interior Ministry also did not issue public warnings on Thursday against “unauthorized public events”, although the ministry said the events were “planned for the near future”.
“The Kremlin is terribly afraid of the flash league action,” because such a peaceful, light-hearted event would enable the opposition to build a relationship with new supporters, who are no longer willing to be more visible and protesting, did Volkov in a YouTube video.
He suggested that the heavy response to the announcement had helped dispel skepticism about the protests in the courtyard.
“I saw a lot of messages on social media saying, ‘When Navalny’s headquarters announced the flashlight meeting, I thought what nonsense … But when I saw the Kremlin’s reaction, I realized it’s right to invent it. . ”