Navalny protests threaten to snowball as complaints mount in Russia

But the weekend’s protests over Navalny’s detention on his return to Russia after his recovery from a poisoning attack threaten to become a broader movement. Discontent is now turning to anger after a court ordered Mr Navalny to be remanded in custody for 30 days, fueled by chronic corruption, the pain of last year’s oil price collapse and Covid-19 lockdown measures.

“We have a real problem with corruption on the one hand and poverty on the other,” said Evgeniya Ragozina, a 28-year-old lawyer who defied minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit temperatures to attend a meeting in the Siberian city of Tyumen. . She added that Mr. Navalny was just the trigger.

“People are more afraid of not seeing a decent future for themselves,” she said. ‘That’s why I’ll be [protesting] until the end of Putin’s political regime. “

Saturday’s rallies were among the largest nationwide expressions of dissent in recent years, totaling more than 100,000 people, according to local media estimates. Police detained about 3,700 people that day, more than ever since a wave of anti-Kremlin protests rocked Russia in 2011 and 2012.

Organizers said they are planning more demonstrations for Sunday, at a time when Putin has laid the foundations for staying in power for years to come. Last year, the Russians approved a series of constitutional changes initiated by the Kremlin that would allow him to stay until 2036, in a vote largely organized as a show of support for the leader.

Mr Navalny has become a symbol of the protests after being detained on his return from Germany, where he was recovering from a poisoning attack in Siberia during the summer. Last weekend’s rallies, in which protesters fought with the police and beat them with snowballs, involved many of his followers.

But the crowd also included a broader coalition of middle and middle class Russians. Polls of protesters in Moscow on Saturday showed that more than 40% protested for the first time. The protests are taking place against a backdrop of rising poverty and rising inflation, caused by a 20% fall in the value of the ruble last year. Many Russians say the government has also not done enough to mitigate the pandemic’s blow.

Mr. Putin is not in immediate political danger. Many Russians still consider him irreplaceable, and his approval score was 65% in November, according to independent pollster Levada. He also has Russian security forces and the judiciary on his side, giving him plenty of room to await the protests, just as his Belarusian counterpart Alexander Lukashenko has done since a contested election in the summer.

But Mr Navalny and his team continue to tear down Mr Putin’s authority with the large online audience he has built up by releasing videos accusing Kremlin-linked officials of corruption. In the days leading up to the protest, they released another video, this time featuring a lavish palace with a casino and an indoor ice hockey rink allegedly built for Mr Putin on the Black Sea coast. Unusually, Mr Putin spoke out on Monday, denying any knowledge of the building owner and calling the allegations lies. Normally, he tries to belittle Mr. Navalny, not to use his name or ignore his accusations.

The clip had already been viewed more than 90 million times on YouTube and struck a chord with many Russians who had largely become accustomed to stories of the leader’s wealth.

“The mood in society is changing,” said Konstantin Kalachev, a political analyst from Moscow, who said there are a wide variety of problems that drive people into the streets. “The reason for the protest is different for each protester.”

The Kremlin’s initial response appears to be to label Mr. Navalny an agent of the US and its allies. The head of the powerful Russian Security Council said on Tuesday that the West needs Navalny to destabilize Russia.

Putin has long enjoyed the confrontation with the West, which has led to Western sanctions in response to alleged hacking attacks and an attempt to influence the 2016 US presidential election, which Putin has denied. Last year, Russian lawmakers passed a bill designating political or campaign groups receiving money from abroad as foreign agents, putting them under restrictions.

However, political analysts suggest that Mr Putin and his allies are still looking for a strategy beyond mass arrests to stem the wave of protests, and will likely be well aware of how similar rallies forced them to free Navalny after he was detained in 2013.

“The Kremlin has no strategy or even a tactic to respond, other than the line of force,” said Andrei Kolesnikov, an expert on Russian domestic policy at Carnegie Moscow Center.

Write to Thomas Grove at [email protected] and Georgi Kantchev at [email protected]