MOSCOW – When the team of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged people to come to their residential areas and shine their cell phone flashlights in a show of unity, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide demonstrations, the new protest format seemed to some to be a haven.
But not to the Russian authorities, who acted vigorously to extinguish the enlightened protests scheduled for Sunday.
Officials accused Navalny’s allies of acting on behalf of NATO. Kremlin-backed TV channels warned that flashlight rallies were part of major uprisings around the world. State news agencies cited unnamed sources as saying that a terrorist group planned attacks during unapproved mass protests.
The suppression efforts represent a change of tactic for the authorities who once attempted to weaken Navalny’s influence by obliterating him.
Kremlin-controlled TV channels largely ignored Navalny’s protests. Russian President Vladimir Putin never named his most prominent critic. State news agencies called the politician and anti-corruption researcher “a blogger” in the rare stories they published mentioning him.
“Navalny went from a person whose name shouldn’t be named to the main topic of the discussion” on state television, Maria Pevchikh, chief of investigations at Navalny’s Foundations for Fighting Corruption, said in a YouTube video Friday.
Pevchikh attributed Navalny’s latest revelation to the sudden rise in attention. His foundation’s two-hour video claiming that a lavish Black Sea palace was built for Putin through extensive corruption has been viewed more than 111 million times on YouTube since its publication on January 19.
The video went two days after Navalny was arrested as he returned to Russia from Germany, where he recovered for five months from nerve poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. The Russian government has denied involvement and has said it has no evidence that Navalny has been poisoned.
While the high-profile arrest and subsequent exposure was a double blow to the authorities, political analyst and former Kremlin speechwriter Abbas Gallyamov says it no longer makes sense to keep Navalny and his activity off the air to deprive him of additional publicity.
“The fact that this strategy has changed suggests that the pro-governmental television audience is somehow receiving information through other channels about Navalny’s activities, recognizing him, interested in his work, and in that sense it makes no sense to keep silence. , ‘Said Gallyamov.
The weekend protests in dozens of cities over Navalny’s detention represented the greatest deluge of discontent in years and seemed to have upset the Kremlin.
Police have reportedly arrested about 10,000 people and beaten many protesters, while state media tried to downplay the scale of the protests.
TV channels broadcast images of empty squares in cities where protests were announced, claiming that few people showed up. In some reports, the police were portrayed as polite and reserved. They alleged that officers had helped people with disabilities cross busy streets, distributed face masks to protesters, and offered them hot tea.
Once the protests ceased and Navalny ally Leonid Volkov announced a break until spring, the Kremlin-backed media reported that grassroots flash mobs titled “Putin is our president” began to conquer the country. State news channel Rossiya 24 broadcasts videos from various cities of people dancing to patriotic songs and waving Russian flags, describing them as a heartfelt expression of support for Putin.
Several independent online outlets reported that instructions to record videos in support of Putin came from the Kremlin and the ruling party of United Russia, and that people featured in some of the recordings had been invited to recordings under false pretenses.
The Russian President’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the pro-Putin videos.
After Navalny’s team posted its video about the palace allegedly built for Putin, state channel Rossiya broadcast its own exposé of Navalny. Anchor Dmitry Kiselev said that while working on the study in Germany, Navalny “lived in the luxury he so despises.”
The reporter sent a message describing the alleged luxurious lifestyle the politician lived abroad, filmed in a house that Navalny had rented, but failed to capture high-end items in the two-story building, which several bedrooms and a small pool.
She pointed to ‘two sofas, a TV, fresh fruit on the table’ in the living room and ‘a kitchen with a coffee maker’, and described a bedroom as ‘luxurious’ even though it didn’t look much business hotel.
In recent days, official media coverage has focused on plans for the protest against flashlights in courtyards this weekend. Reports quoted at length from the social media post of Navalny ally Volkov announcing the event, and accused him of acting on behalf of his Western escorts, pointing to an online conference with European officials that he had the day before participated.
The political talk show “60 Minutes” spent nearly half an hour on the subject, citing the flashlight as an idea from a manual on revolutions. Footage was broadcast of protesters holding flashlights during the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, mass rallies in Belarus last summer and other uprisings around the world.
On Thursday, state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti reported, citing anonymous sources, that a terrorist group from Syria was training insurgents for possible terrorist attacks in Russian cities “at locations of mass rallies.”
The reports did not relate to specific protests. Nor were there any public warnings against “unauthorized public events” issued by the Attorney General’s Office and Russia’s Interior Ministry on Thursday, although the ministry reported events “scheduled at the nearest time.”
“The Kremlin is terribly afraid of the flashlight campaign,” because such a peaceful, light-hearted event would allow the opposition to bond with new supporters who are not ready to be more visible and involved in the protests, Volkov said in a Youtube video.
He suggested the crackdown on the announcement actually helped dispel skepticism about the courtyard demonstrations.
“I saw a lot of posts on social media (which said), ‘When Navalny’s headquarters announced the flashlight meeting, I thought what nonsense … But when I saw the Kremlin’s response, I realized they were right to make it up. ‘ ‘