Top Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny triumphantly returned home to the nation’s capital yesterday after his unexpected release from prison, saying he would push ahead with a bid to become Moscow mayor.
Navalny and his wife Yulia stepped off an overnight train from the northeastern city of Kirov to hundreds of supporters who chanted his name as dozens of riot police looked on.
“We are going to run and we will win,” Navalny said through a loudspeaker to roars of approval from the crowd, many of whom clutching flowers and wearing white T-shirts reading “Navalny” or “Navalny’s brother.”
“Together we are a huge powerful force and I am glad we have started realizing this,” he said.
“Ahead of us is a big, difficult electoral campaign. Seven weeks of non-stop work and it’s just the start,” he said, referring to the September 8 poll.
PROTESTS
Navalny’s conviction and sentencing to five years in a penal colony by a Kirov court on Thursday sparked protests in Moscow and Saint Petersburg from supporters of the charismatic, powerful orator who led unprecedented demonstrations against Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2011 and last year.
In an unexpected move less than a day after his sentencing, a higher court in the sleepy industrial city 900km northeast of Moscow released Navalny from jail pending his appeal of the conviction.
The court ruled that keeping the 37-year-old father of two behind bars would “limit his right to be elected” in Moscow mayoral polls on September 8, for which he had already registered as a candidate.
The release shocked Moscow, with many observers describing it as a sign of infighting among the country’s ruling elite and uncertainty about how to handle Putin’s foremost, popular opponent.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing