Navalny supporters undeterred, call for fresh protest across Russia

Supporters of the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have called for more rallies across the country this weekend to demand his release after he was put in pre-trial detention over parole violations he denies.

One of Navalny’s leading allies, lawyer and politician Lyubov Sobol, told reporters that his anti-corruption movement would continue to operate despite many people being detained after protests swept through Russian cities at the weekend.

She said they planned protests on 31 January and 2 February, when a court is scheduled to consider motions to convert his suspended sentence into a real prison term.

As a wave of criminal cases were launched against those detained by police, a woman who was kicked to the ground by a baton-wielding policeman in St Petersburg has emerged as a symbol of the heavy-handed way the authorities cracked down on the protesters.

The case of Margarita Yudina, 54, has become a national scandal after footage of her being kicked in the stomach by a policeman for asking why the officer and his colleagues had detained went viral online.

The Kremlin said that the “violence” by some protesters was unprecedented and aggressive. Incidences of police violence were far fewer and being investigated, it said.

But Navalny’s supporters were undeterred, Sobol said, and would continue with demonstrations calling for his release despite “arrests of our followers and allies.

She added that one of their goals was to stop President Vladimir Putin’s party, United Russia, in the upcoming parliamentary balloting.

The crackdown on the protesters continued to bring international outrage. The top diplomats of the United States, Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan, as well as the high representative of the European Union, condemned the “politically motivated arrest and detention” of Navalny and said they were “deeply concerned by the detention of thousands of peaceful protesters and journalists.”

Joe Biden raised concerns about the case when he spoke to Putin for the first time as US president on Tuesday.

The Guardian