Today at 13:52
Photo from twitter.com/teamnavalny
Opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, was detained in Moscow today, during one of numerous protests around the country, which are taking place two days before Vladimir Putin’s inauguration for his fourth term in office.
Protestors have been shouting slogans like “he is not our tsar” and “Russia without Putin.” The protests have been organized by Navalny and his supporters. Navalny had called for people to take to the streets in more than 90 towns and cities across the world’s largest country to register their opposition to what Navalny says is Putin’s autocratic Tsar-like rule.
Putin won a landslide re-election victory in March, extending his grip over Russia for six more years, until 2024, making him the longest-lasting leader since Soviet dictator, Josef Stalin, who ruled for nearly 30 years.
Pro-Putin supporters also gathered. Men in traditional Cossack outfits started beating the protesters with whips in Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow. Some Cossacks and Navalny supporters started to fight. Pro-Putin activists shouted “Our country, our rules” and “We are for Putin.”
At least a thousand protestors have already been arrested.
The largest number of detainees were recorded in Chelyabinsk and Moscow, at least 150 people in each of these cities. Dozens of people were apprehended in Yakutsk, Krasnoyarsk, Krasnodar, Kaluga and Novokuznetsk. Also, protesters were detained in the city of Saint Petersburg. A member of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Nikolay Lyaskin, and a correspondent for the newspaper, Novaya Gazeta, were among the arrested.
Photo from Ukrinform
Navalny is the long-time anti-corruption campaigner in Russia. He is not an elected politician, but has led protests against the rule of Putin and his allies since the parliamentary election of 2011. He was barred from running in the current election on what he claimed was a false pretext. He was charged with embezzlement, charges he denies. He said that the charges were politically-motivated.
Today, he was detained soon after showing up on on Pushkinskaya Square.
Video of Alexey @navalny being detained by police today in central #Moscow, #Russia: #RussiaProtests pic.twitter.com/xy2PSTF7g6
— Alex Kokcharov (@AlexKokcharov) May 5, 2018
Authorities in Moscow warned Navalny supporters about taking part in the planned protests, calling it “absolutely unlawful.”
This is not the first time Navalny has been arrested. He was jailed at least three times in 2017 and charged with breaking the law by repeatedly organising public meetings and rallies.
The exact number of protestors around the country is difficult to calculate, as Russian authorities are continuing to downplay the sizes of the protests.
Turnout at the rally in the Russian capital was about 1,500, according to police, but Reuters estimated there were “several thousand” people at the event. In a tweet, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Roizman, estimated a turnout of at least five thousand in Ural region.
