MOSCOW (AP) – Russian police have issued a strong warning against participating in protests scheduled for Sunday to call for the release of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny, the Kremlin’s most prominent enemy.
The warning comes amid arrests of Navalny employees and opposition journalists and a police plan to restrict movement in central Moscow on Sunday.
Navalny was arrested on January 17 after flying back from Germany to Russia, where he had to recover from nerve poisoning for five months. His detention sparked nationwide protests in about 100 cities a week ago; nearly 4,000 people were arrested.
The next demonstration in Moscow is planned in Lubyanka Square. The Federal Security Service, which Navalny claims to have poisoned with a Soviet-era nerve agent on behalf of the Kremlin, has its headquarters in the square. The Russian government has denied any role in the poisoning of the 44-year-old.
City police said much of central Moscow, from Red Square to Lubyanka, would have pedestrian restrictions and seven nearby metro stations would be closed on Sunday. Restaurants in the area will also be closed, and the iconic GUM department store in Red Square said it would only open at night.
Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk quoted the coronavirus pandemic Saturday in a warning against protests. She said participants caught in violation of epidemiological regulations could face criminal charges.
The January 23 protests in support of Navalny were the largest and most widespread in Russia in many years, and the authorities tried to prevent a repeat. Police this week carried out a series of raids on apartments and offices of Navalny’s family, employees and anti-corruption organization.
His brother Oleg, top assistant Lyubov Sobol and three other people were placed under house arrest on Friday as part of a criminal investigation into alleged violations of the coronavirus rules during last weekend’s protests.
Sergei Smirnov, editor of the Mediazona news site founded by members of the Pussy Riot punk collective, was arrested by police on Saturday leaving his home. No charges were announced against him.
Navalny fell into a coma on August 20 on a domestic flight from Siberia to Moscow. Two days later he was transferred to a hospital in Berlin. Labs in Germany, France and Sweden, and tests by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, showed he had been exposed to the Novichok nerve agent.
Russian authorities have refused to open a full-fledged criminal investigation, citing a lack of evidence that he had been poisoned.
Navalny was arrested when he returned to Russia on the grounds that his months of recovery in Germany violated the terms of a suspended sentence he received in 2014 in a conviction for fraud and money laundering, a case that according to him was political revenge.
Just after the arrest, Navalny’s team released a two-hour video on his YouTube channel about a lavish Black Sea residence supposedly built for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The property features amenities such as an ‘aqua disco’, a hookah lounge where you can watch pole dancing and a casino. The video has been viewed over 100 million times and inspired a stream of sarcastic jokes around the Internet.
Putin has said that neither he nor any of his close relatives own the property, and the Kremlin has maintained it has no relationship with the president, even though it is protected by the federal bodyguard organization FSO, which provides security for top officials.
Russian state television later broadcast a report of the compound showing that it was under construction and included an interview with an engineer who claimed the building would be a luxury hotel.
On Saturday, construction magnate Arkady Rotenberg, a close Putin employee and his occasional judo sparring partner, claimed he owned the property.