Alexei Navalny: Russian authorities brace for Saturday protests

Russia is braced for mass protests on Saturday as thousands of supporters of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny are expected to hold rallies across the country to call for his release from jail.

Police are expected to break up the unsanctioned demonstrations in Moscow, St Petersburg and dozens of other cities in what allies of Navalny say is their best chance of convincing the Kremlin to free him.

Navalny was arrested on Sunday after returning from treatment abroad for a poisoning attempt on his life, which was traced back to Russia’s FSB security service. A parole board could reverse an earlier sentence and send him to a penal colony as early as the end of January.

The Moscow mayor’s office has warned the public against attending the rallies and the powerful Investigative Committee has opened a criminal investigation into a flood of calls on social networks, including TikTok, Facebook and others, for young people to join the rallies.

Authorities claimed that social networks had complied with their demands to delete the content, claiming that TikTok had deleted 38% of posts promoting the rallies and that YouTube and VKontakte had each deleted 50% of similar posts appealing to underage protesters.

In remarks from a Moscow jail released on Friday night, Navalny told supporters that he was in good spirits and, in case anything mysteriously happened to him, that he was emotionally stable and not planning to harm himself. “I definitely know that outside of my prison there are many good people, and help is on the way,” he said.

Police have arrested Navalny’s press secretary, two lawyers and a top investigator who helped prepare an investigation into a £1bn palace on the Black Sea they claim was bankrolled by Putin’s friends and state companies. As of Friday, the video has been watched 50m times on YouTube.

Navalny supporters were also arrested in Krasnodar, Kaliningrad, Vladivostok and other cities across Russia, as protest coordinators planned rallies in at least 65 cities and towns in a show of strength that could be the country’s largest demonstrations in years.

Kira Yarmysh, Navalny’s press secretary, said police threatened to break down her door while detaining her before the protests. She continued to tweet from custody, saying that attending the protests was “everyone’s duty, if we want prosperity, freedom and the well-being of our country. And so that Alexei and all those illegally behind bars are set free.”

“January 23rd should become legendary,” she wrote from a jail cell before signing off for the night.

Navalny could be sent to a prison colony if a parole board decides to revise a three-and-a-half-year sentence handed down in 2014. Russian investigators are also preparing criminal cases that could carry more than a decade of jail time if Navalny is charged.

Opposition protests have attracted more young Russians, including many teenagers, since Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Fund began releasing online investigations into senior politicians and others close to Putin. In 2017, protests largely attended by young Russian shut down central Moscow’s Tverskaya street after Navalny released an investigation into prime minister Dmitry Medvedev.

Profile

Who is Alexei Navalny?

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Born in 1976 just outside Moscow, Alexei Navalny is a lawyer-turned-campaigner whose Anti-Corruption Foundation investigates the wealth of Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. 

He started out as a Russian nationalist, but emerged as the main leader of Russia's democratic opposition during the wave of protests that led up to the 2012 presidential election, and has since been a thorn in the Kremlin’s side. 

Navalny is barred from appearing on state television, but has used social media to his advantage. A 2017 documentary accusing the prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, of corruption received more than 30m views on YouTube within two months. 

He has been repeatedly arrested and jailed. The European court of human rights ruled that Russia violated Navalny's rights by holding him under house arrest in 2014. Election officials barred him from running for president in 2018 due to an embezzlement conviction that he claims was politically motivated. Navalny told the commission its decision would be a vote 'not against me, but against 16,000 people who have nominated me; against 200,000 volunteers who have been canvassing for me'. 

There has also been a physical price to pay. In April 2017, he was attacked with green dye that nearly blinded him in one eye, and in July 2019 he was taken from jail to hospital with symptoms that one of his doctors said could indicate poisoning. In 2020, he was again hospitalised after a suspected poisoning, and taken to Germany for treatment. The German government later said toxicology results showed Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent.

Navalny was sent to prison again in February 2021, sentenced to two years and eight months, in a move that triggered marches in Moscow and the arrest of more than 1,000 protesters. By April he was described as being "seriously ill" in prison.

Photograph: Pavel Golovkin/AP

Influencers on TikTok and other social networks have come out in support of the rally, attracting warnings from Russia’s general prosecutor that the social networks should take down the content or face fines or other sanctions.

In one viral video, English-language teacher @neurolera gives tips for how protesters can pretend that they are American tourists if they’re caught by police. “You are violating my human rights!” she says with a distinctly American intonation. And if all else failed, she adds, then tell the police: “I’m gonna call my lawyer.”

On Friday, the Moscow city police department said it would prosecute anyone calling on people to join the protests “in the media, on the internet, and on social networks”. In particular, the city prosecutor singled out calls for “minors to participate in mass riots”.

Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin press secretary, said on Friday that the investigation into Putin and the Black Sea mansion was a “lie” and a “cut-and-paste job”.