When riot police came in to get Pushkin Moscow square back on Saturday, you could only see them from the crowd in their high-rise truncheons, ready to strike. Then their black helmets came in, and they finally pushed on, driving a wave of Russians screaming out on boulevards and the side streets of the capital. “Respectful citizens, the current incident is illegal. We are doing everything we can to make sure you are safe, ”said an officer over a loudspeaker, despite all the evidence.
For more than a decade, the Kremlin has used every available tool to keep Russians off the streets, raising fears and sadness to protest against Vladimir Putin looking pointless. And yet in Saturday’s defiant scenes in cities across Russia, from St Petersburg to Vladivostok and even in Yakutsk, where protesters signaled temperatures below -50C, tens of thousands of Russians sent a message to Kremlin eliminates all challenges in Russia: there are plenty.
As police battled to take control of city squares, some protesters fought back, throwing snowballs and trading blows with officers in body armor. Many others sang for Putin ‘s departure, exchanged jokes, filmed Instagram stories, and ran to stay one step ahead of the police, who chased them across the city.
The spark was arrested by Alexei Navalny, Russia’s opposition leader who is said to have been poisoned by the FSB. But many of the tens of thousands out in Moscow said the problems had deepened, linked to Putin and his two decades of control of the country.
“I had stopped complaining for a long time, everything looked pointless,” said Yulia Makhovskaya, 45, who was in attendance with her 18-year-old son Nikolai. “But something today just made me come.” Navalny was just last fall. “
Saturday’s protests were one of the biggest demonstrations against Putin’s ruling in the past decade. More than 2,500 people were arrested at dozens of uncontrolled rallies across the country calling for the release of the opposition leader from prison, as the turnout was far above expectations. a lot of campaigners.
Naval allies hope to be able to force the Kremlin to be released through a demonstration of force, but it is unclear whether the protests will violate the government’s intention to imprison the resolute Putin who has been criticized for so long. ten years.
Clashes began when police wielding truncheons chased protesters off major squares in Moscow and several other cities, and columns of demonstrators broke through police lines in Moscow and St. Petersburg, leading to battles on the streets.
Police at times seemed to be losing control. In Moscow, a video showed protesters trading blows with riot officials near the main site of the protest, when nearby young demonstrators kicked around a police riot helmet like a football. In St. Petersburg, protesters closed down the area’s main street, Nevsky Prospekt, and Navalny’s team was eventually forced to issue a call for them to go home.
Russia’s National Audit Committee said it opened an investigation into violence against police officers on Saturday afternoon. A spokesman for the U.S. embassy condemned the violence against demonstrators, accusing Moscow of violating Russian rights over a peaceful protest.
No one was reported dead, but several protesters appeared to have been seriously injured, including one photo dripping from the head and another which appeared to have been unconscious when it was shot. -into your police van. Another activist, who rubbed snow on a brush under his right eye to reduce the swelling, told the Spectator he had been beaten in the face by a nightmare twice.
The biggest protests took place in Moscow, where a population estimated by Reuters at 40,000 squared the city with an image to the poet Alexander Pushkin. “Leave!” the protesters would say, calling for Putin to resign.
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The demonstrations were some of the largest in Moscow since 2012, when more than 100,000 came out to protest against flawed elections, as well as Putin’s plans to return to the Kremlin for a third term.
These objections were sparked when Navalny was arrested last Sunday while returning from overseas treatment after being poisoned. A parole board could send him to a penal colony as early as the end of January.
“We feel very bad for Navalny. You don’t have to be a chess master to understand what was going to happen to him, ”said Natalya Krainova, a schoolteacher who took a copy of the foundation to the square because she made sure it was fair. her complaint. “If we don’t keep coming out [to protest], the problem in this country will never go away. And that problem is Putin. “
Police appeared to be targeting young Navalny supporters, with packets of helmet officers diving into the crowd to arrest them. Artyom, a 19-year-old student at a Moscow economics university, said students on Friday were warned not to complain or comment on outcomes, which he understood meant putting out.
“They’re afraid they’re losing control of young people, who they think should be there for putin, to be thankful for,” he said. “A lot of me [classmates] they were afraid to come out today. “
Vladislav, a 24-year-old sound technician with face tattoos, said young people were sick of the lack of change. “It feels hopeless,” he said.
The Audit Committee has also opened a criminal investigation into calls on social media for school children to come to the rallies, with a focus on an explosion of posts on platforms such as TikTok backing an opposition leader.
“Special respect to all the school children who did what my lawyers call ‘mayhem on TikTok.’ I’m not sure what that means, but it looks great, ‘” said Navalny from his prison cell on the evening of the protest, according to his team.
In his remarks, Navalny also thanked those who supported him and watched a recent study broadcast on TouTube into a £ 1bn Black Sea palace said to have been built for Putin. . As Saturday
in the evening, it was watched 70 million times.
“I know there are a lot of good people outside of this prison and that help is coming,” Navalny said.
The Kremlin did not immediately respond to the complaints. Putin’s only public comments were to commemorate the death of Larry King, a guest of the American show.
Public protests have saved Navalny from prison in the past. In 2013, he was sentenced to five years in prison for money according to a report from a timber company in the city of Kirov.
But the day he was sentenced, thousands of protesters exploded on the street across from the Kremlin, stopping traffic across from the Red Square, just in front of the State Duma. The next day, Navalny’s sentence was handed over to a probation service, and the opposition leader was abruptly admitted. The embarrassed face proved what many already knew: court decisions depend on the whim of the Kremlin.
“It is clear that only public pressure, just street protests, can bring Alexei out of Matrosskaya Tishina where he was put by Putin,” said Leonid Volkov, a friend of Navalny and one of the few supporters. which was not held last week. “That’s what Putin fears more than anything on earth.”
Navalny advisers said they believed the 2013 strategy would work in 2020, but that the protests had to be much bigger, as Navalny had grown from being just an enemy of the Kremlin to someone Putin said as a “spy”.
Analysts said Navalny was unlikely to be released from prison this time around, but that the strong turnout in cities across the country would make an important statement.
“Navalny is not going to be released,” said Mark Galeotti, a senior associate at thinktank of the Royal United Services Institute. “The protests are as great as anything about forcing the Kremlin to pay a price for that, and show that putting one man behind will not move bars.”