MOSCOW (AP) – In a note from prison, opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged the Russians on Thursday to overcome their fear and ‘free’ the country from a ‘bunch of thieves’ as the Kremlin announced the arrests of thousands of protesters as an appropriate response. to the unapproved meetings.
Navalny, who was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison earlier this week, said in a statement on his Instagram account that “iron doors slammed behind my back with a deafening noise, but I feel like a free man. I’m right. Thanks to your support. Thanks to the support of my family. “
Navalny, 44, an anti-corruption campaigner who is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most determined political enemy, was arrested January 17 as he returned from his five-month recovery in Germany after a nerve poisoning he blames on the Kremlin given. The Russian authorities deny any involvement, claiming they have no evidence that he was poisoned despite tests by several European laboratories.
A court in Moscow sent Navalny to prison on Tuesday, finding that he had violated the terms of his probation while recovering in Germany. The verdict stems from a 2014 embezzlement conviction that Navalny dismissed as fabricated and declared illegal by the European Court of Human Rights.
He said his imprisonment was “Putin’s personal revenge” for surviving and uncovering the murder plot.
“What’s more, it is a message from Putin and his friends to the whole country: ‘Have you seen what we can do? We spit on laws and steamrolls anyone who dares to challenge us. We are the law. ”
Protests against Navalny’s arrest and imprisonment have spread across Russia’s eleven time zones over the past two weekends, drawing tens of thousands in the greatest expression of discontent with Putin’s rule in years.
In an inexorable response to the protest, police arrested more than 10,000 protest participants across Russia and beat scores, according to the arrest surveillance group OVD-Info. Many detainees spent hours in police buses after the Moscow and St. Petersburg detention centers quickly ran out of space. After a long wait, they were crammed into overcrowded prison cells without precautions to prevent them from becoming infected with the corona virus.
Some inmates said their cells had no beds and that they should sleep on the floor, while others complained that there were not enough beds and that the prisoners took turns taking a nap.
Leonid Volkov, Navalny’s chief strategist who currently resides abroad, said in a live YouTube broadcast that the protests should pause until spring after they peak. He said protesters won a “huge moral victory” and argued that trying to hold rallies every weekend would only lead to thousands of arrests and exhaust participants.
Instead, he urged supporters to focus on challenging Kremlin candidates in September’s parliamentary elections and securing new Western sanctions against Russia to push for Navalny’s release. He said the Navalny team would try to ensure that “any world leader would discuss nothing but Navalny’s release with Putin.”
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had a phone call with US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday, who raised the Navalny issue, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said. It said Lavrov stressed the need to respect Russian law.
Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Russia will not listen to Western criticism of Navalny’s conviction and the crackdown on protesters. “We are not going to take into account such statements regarding the enforcement of our laws against those who violate them and Russian court rulings,” said Peskov.
He shook off questions about inmates who waited long hours in police buses and were squeezed into tight cells, saying they were to blame. “The situation was not caused by law enforcement. It was provoked by participants in non-sanctioned actions, ”Peskov said during a telephone conversation with reporters.
One detainee, 30-year-old architect Almir Shamasov, who spent 10 days in a Sacharovo detention center outside Moscow, said he spent 20 hours in a police van that was either flooded with fumes or shivering when the engine was turned off.
“When you’re in a police van with the engine and heating on, the smell of gas or diesel is unbearable. When it’s off, the steam will come out of your mouth, ” he said after being released late Wednesday.
Another detainee, Eva Sokolova, said after walking out of the Sacharovo prison that she slept on the floor of a police station for two nights before the court set her three-day sentence.
About 150 relatives of the detainees waited outside in the snow for hours on Wednesday to hand over food and supplies. One of them, Tatiana Yastrebova, said she had waited six hours for officials to accept some items she brought for her son.
After Navalny’s arrest, authorities also quickly silenced and isolated his allies. Last week, a Moscow court placed his brother, Oleg, top employee Lyubov Sobol and several others under house arrest – with no internet access – for two months as part of a criminal investigation into alleged violations of coronavirus restrictions during protests. Sobol was formally charged on Thursday with inciting sanitation violations by organizing protests.
Navalny has scheduled another hearing in Moscow on Friday on individual allegations of defamation against a World War II veteran. He has dismissed the case because the Kremlin is taking political revenge.
Navalny argued that the crackdown on the protests was a sign of weakness, saying that government power is an illusion and urging Russians not to fear it.
“They can only hold on to power and use it to enrich themselves by relying on our fear,” he said. ‘If we overcome that fear, we can free our motherland from a bunch of resident thieves. And we will. We have to do it for ourselves and for future generations. “
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Kostya Manenkov contributed to this report.