RUSSIAN POLICE ARREST THOUSANDS IN PRO-NAVALNY PROTEST

Sun 31 January 2021:

Russian police detained hundreds of protesters on Sunday as activists took to the streets across the country demanding the release of jailed Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny.

Security forces detained Yulia Navalnaya, wife of Navalny, at a protest in Moscow, his supporters said on social media. OVD-Info, a monitoring group, said more than 300 people were detained in the capital.

Navalnaya was also detained at a similar demonstration in support of her husband last week.

The first rallies took place in the Far East, including the port city of Vladivostok where protesters gathered in the city’s central square despite police closing it off ahead of the rally.

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“The desire to live in a free country is stronger than the fear of being detained,” said Andrei, 25, who declined to give his last name.

Footage from Vladivostok showed dozens of protesters escaping the police on the frozen waters of the Amur Bay and circle dancing. More than 100 arrests were made there.

Videos posted online showed demonstrators being hauled into buses by police. The mostly young people were seen dancing and chanting: “Putin is a thief,” and “Freedom for Russia.”

According to independent monitors, about 1,500 people were detained in more than a dozen cities.

Navalny, 44, was arrested on January 17 after flying back to Russia from Germany, where he had spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning. His detention sparked nationwide protests in about 100 cities last week. Nearly 4,000 people were reported arrested.

Authorities are also targeting online platforms, demanding that they delete posts with calls for rallies or face fines. The country’s media watchdog said on Friday that it summoned representatives of several social networks, including Facebook and TikTok, for failing to comply.

In a message from jail on Thursday, Navalny urged Russians to stage new rallies.

“The majority is on our side. Let’s wake them up,” he wrote from Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina, a high-security detention centre.