MOSCOW (AP) – Russian police have issued a strong warning against participating in protests planned for Sunday to release the release of opposition prison leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s main enemy.
The warning comes amid arrests of Navalny collaborators and opposition journalists and a police plan to curb movement in central Moscow on Sunday.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 after flying back from Germany to Russia, where he spent five months recovering from nerve agent poisoning. His detention sparked nationwide protests in about 100 cities a week ago; nearly 4,000 people were arrested.
The next demonstration in Moscow is planned for Lubyanka Square. The Federal Security Service, which according to Navalny arranges for him to be poisoned on behalf of the Kremlin with a Soviet-era nerve agent, is headquartered in the square. The Russian government has denied a role in the poisoning of the 44-year-old.
The city police department said that much of Moscow’s city center from Red Square to Lubyanka would have pedestrian restrictions and that seven metro stations in the area would be closed on Sunday. The restaurants in the area also need to be closed, and the iconic GUM department store on Red Square said it would only be open that evening.
Russia’s interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk quoted the coronavirus pandemic as saying in a warning against protests on Saturday. She said participants who violated epidemiological regulations could face criminal charges.
The January 23 protests in support of Navalny were the largest and most widespread in many years in Russia, and the authorities tried to prevent a recurrence. Police this week carried out a series of raids on apartments and offices of Navalny’s family, associates and anti-corruption organization.
His brother Oleg, top assistant Lyubov Sobol and three other people were placed under house arrest for two months on Friday as part of a criminal investigation into alleged violations of the coronavirus regulations during last weekend’s protests.
Sergei Smirnov, editor of the Mediazona news website founded by members of the Pussy Riot punk collective, was detained by police as he left his home on Saturday. No charges against him were announced.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 while on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. He was transferred to a Berlin hospital two days later. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, determined that he was exposed to the nerve agent of Novichok.
Russian authorities have refused to launch a full-fledged criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence that he was poisoned.
Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia on the grounds that his months-long recovery in Germany violated the terms of a suspended sentence he convicted in 2014 of fraud and money laundering, a case he said was political revenge wash.
Just after the arrest, Navalny’s team posted a two-hour video on its YouTube channel about a lavish Black Residence that was allegedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The property has facilities such as an “aqua disco”, a water pipe lounge equipped for pole dancing and a casino. The video has been viewed more than 100 million times and inspired a stream of sarcastic jokes on the internet.
Putin said neither he nor any of his relatives owned the property, and the Kremlin insisted it had nothing to do with the president, although it was protected by the federal bodyguard agency FSO, which provides senior government officials with security.
Russian state television later broadcast a report of the complex showing that it was under construction and included an interview with an engineer claiming that the building would be a luxury hotel.
Construction tycoon Arkady Rotenberg, a close ally of Putin and his occasional judo teammate, claimed he owned the property.