Russian prosecutors yesterday backed a request to imprison opposition leader Alexei Navalny for several years on old charges, after police detained a record number of anti-Kremlin protesters across the country.
On Sunday, demonstrators defied government warnings and rallied across the country — including in Moscow and Saint Petersburg where authorities enforced unprecedented lockdowns of the city center — in a second weekend of mass protests over the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent opponent.
The protests — stretching from the Pacific port of Vladivostok to the northwestern city of Pskov — came ahead of a high-profile court hearing that could see Navalny imprisoned for several years.
Photo: Reuters
Navalny’s detention and the crackdown on protesters has sparked an outcry in the West.
EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Josep Borrell is expected to press the Kremlin to free Navalny when he heads to Moscow on Thursday.
Navalny, 44, is facing charges of breaching the terms of a 2014 suspended sentence for embezzlement and could be jailed for two-and-a-half years.
The General Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement that it backed a request by the prison service to change the suspended sentence to jail time.
“This motion is considered lawful and justified,” the statement said.
Navalny was detained at a Moscow airport on Jan. 18 after flying back to Russia from Germany where he was recovering from a poisoning in August last year. He blames the attack with the Novichok nerve agent on Putin and the Russian security agency.
Navalny’s team has urged his sympathizers to gather in front of Moscow’s Simonovsky district court today to show support for the opposition politician.
In the past few years, Navalny has served a number of brief jail stints, but never a long prison term.
On Sunday, thousands of people rallied across Russia to demand freedom for Navalny and changes to Russia’s tightly controlled political system.
OVD Info, which monitors arrests at opposition protests, said more than 5,400 people had been detained — a record in the history of modern Russia.
A Moscow court yesterday ordered the wife of Navalny, Yulia, to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles (US$263) for breaking protest regulations by attending the demonstration, her lawyer Svetlana Davydova told the Interfax news agency.
Davydova said the defense plans to appeal the ruling.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov defended the clampdown.
“We are talking about unlawful rallies,” he told reporters. “Naturally, police take measures against participants of these unlawful rallies — hence the number of detained.”
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Twitter condemned “the persistent use of harsh tactics against peaceful protesters and journalists by Russian authorities for a second week straight”.
France urged Germany to scrap the Nordstream II gas pipeline project with Russia in protest of Navalny’s detention.
Additional reporting by AP
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