Supporters of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny yesterday protested across Russia against planned increases to the pension age, a challenge to the authorities who were holding regional elections on the same day.
The changes, going through parliament, have shaved about 15 percentage points off Russian President Vladimir Putin’s popularity and are the most unpopular government measure since a 2005 move to scrap Soviet-eras benefits, which led to nationwide pensioner protests.
Navalny, barred from state TV and prevented from running against Putin for president earlier this year, hopes to tap into public anger over the reform.
Photo: EPA-EFE
He had planned to lead a protest in Moscow yesterday, but a court last month convicted him of breaking protest laws and jailed him for 30 days. Navalny said the move was designed to derail the protests.
OVD-Info, a rights organization that monitors detentions, said 50 Navalny supporters had been detained by police in the run-up to the protests and that a further 31 activists, including some of Navalny’s closest aides, were detained yesterday.
His supporters pressed ahead anyway and planned to hold rallies in more than 80 towns and cities by the end of the day, including Moscow and St Petersburg.
The first rallies took place yesterday morning in eastern Russia. Footage of a rally in Ulan-Ude, about 4,400km east of Moscow, showed protesters walking through the city holding red balloons escorted by the police.
“Putin and his government have plundered the budget for the past 18 years,” Navalny’s team said in a pre-protest statement. “All that time they assured us there would not in any circumstance be a rise in the pension age. And now they are putting it up. The authorities are not listening to people and that means it’s time to take to the streets.”
In Moscow the authorities rejected an application from Navalny’s supporters to protest in the city center, raising the possibility that the police might disperse the rally by detaining people, as they have often done in the past.
News reports and other tallies showed at least 40 people had been arrested so far.
After being amended by Putin, the reforms envisage raising the retirement age for men from 60 to 65 and from 50 to 55 for women. Average life expectancy in Russia for men is 66 and 77 for women.
Opinion polls put Navalny’s support in the single digits, but backers note he won almost a third of the vote in a 2013 Moscow mayoral race, and believe he could give Putin a run for his money if ever allowed to run against him on a level playing field.
Navalny has likened Putin to an autocratic tsar who has clung to power for too long.
Yesterday’s elections were to select the heads of 26 of Russia’s 85 regions, including in Moscow, as well as local lawmakers and other officials.
Kremlin-loyal candidates are expected to win a majority of the races, with serious opposition candidates in the Moscow mayoral vote barred from standing.
Additional reporting by AFP
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese