Russia More than 2,000 arrested during the protests over the arrest of Navalny, including the wife of the opponent
Russia locked up opposition leader
Alexey Navalny
but has "freed" the opposition.
Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets in more than 100 locations in Russia to demand the release of opposition leader Alexey Navalny in one of the largest nationwide protests the country has seen in recent years.
The organizers last night spoke of 40,000 people protesting in the center of Moscow.
Cars stopped by the square and honked their horns in solidarity:
"Putin out, Putin out!"
shouted a taxi driver standing next to his vehicle.
Next to the other door, in the middle of the street, his client applauded the protesters and took photos of them.
The protests did not have permission from the authorities and the atmosphere was confrontational from the beginning.
A sector of the population begins to see the government as an unbearable presence that must be confronted.
The photos of those injured in the demonstrations that ran through social networks last night are the final seasoning of that story.
In a country where the system is monochrome and does not evolve, this Saturday the protest was different:
the same desire for change with more accumulated anger
.
The police had to use themselves thoroughly: "They had never beaten us in this way," claimed a bruised opponent last night.
The protesters also crossed some red lines that are normally respected: law enforcement officers were surrounded, attacked with snowballs in the middle of the street and an FSB car was vandalized, the intelligence services accused of intoxicating Navalny in August.
The police used violence to remove detained protesters one by one.
Some Russians responded with a clean punch.
Authorities report several officers injured.
In Yakutsk people demonstrated at 50 below zero
.
In St. Petersburg, for the first time in recent history, protesters marched down the city's central artery, the iconic Nevsky Avenue.
Across the country there were more than 3,200 detainees.
Yulia Navalnaya
, Navalny's wife, was arrested amid marches across the country in support of her husband.
Navalny was arrested last Sunday upon his return to Russia from Germany, where he recovered from the poisoning he suffered in 2020 on the orders of Russian President
Vladimir Putin
, according to the complaint.
Liubov Sobol
, a very close ally of Navalny, was also detained: this politician and lawyer works in the Fund to Fight Corruption (FBK) created by the opposition leader.
Its investigation platform has just revealed a secret palace of the Russian president valued at one billion euros.
Putin's response
The state, which has recently toughened anti-demonstration laws, is preparing its response to last night's challenge.
The Investigation Committee has opened criminal cases for attacks on security forces, vandalism and deliberate damage to property, notes the RIA Novosti agency.
New mobilizations are being prepared and
on February 2 a court hearing will decide whether Alexey Navalny has to serve a sentence from years ago in prison
.
The Russian opposition has always had a difficult time getting its message into the public debate in the country.
But Navalny's assassination attempt last year and his imprisonment have put the opponent at the center for the first time.
Well-known figures of culture and entertainment have called for justice for a man who until recently only had solid support in the big cities
.
In Vladivostok the demonstration was attended by Yuri Dud, author of one of the most popular Russian YouTube channels with 8.6 million subscribers.
The capital and small towns protested the same day.
"People took to the streets not only for the freedom of Navalny, but also because they see no other way to seek justice where there are no courts or elections," wrote the columnist of 'Novaya Gazeta' Kirill Martynov last night.
Following the trend of the last two years, there are more and more teenagers in the marches, increasingly spread on platforms such as
TikTok
.
Many young people attended who have not known any other reference to Russian state power than Vladimir Putin.
Alisa, 19, was yesterday in the front line of Pushkin Square with two friends: "We are not here because we want Navalny as president, but because we want a government that behaves in a fair and fair way with the opposition, the elections they were a fiction, "he explained to EL MUNDO as lines of riot police passed by him.
Along with her, Sabina, also 19, asked for a fairer country: "Now everything is shared between Putin and his people."
There were old men with traditional Russian hats, married couples, students with banners and residents of other cities with Russian flags.
"What a fucking night"
In some balconies,
flags of Belarus appeared
, where protests against the regime have taken place since the summer.
Shouts against the government and the police were repeated in cities large and small.
"What a shitty night," an agent complained as he blocked the passage of one of the subway exits.
Citizens of all ages recorded them with their mobile phones and sang songs against them in the subways of the square.
Respect for authority has dropped two notches this winter, at least in Moscow.
Although the political project of the dissent is not armed,
there is a common thread that runs from the countryside to the city
: the desire for the rule of law, security for all regardless of what is said or thought, and a brake once and for all to the corruption.
In Moscow alone there were more than 900 arrests.
The police were forced to cut off access to the city center and to the Kremlin as well.
Life in the center of the Russian capital was disrupted by the convocation of an extra-parliamentary opposition that according to the official media hardly represents anyone.
Around 7:00 pm, groups of protesters arrived at the Matroskaya Tishina Pretrial Detention Center, where Navalny is being held.
There, too, the arrests continued until late at night.
The government holds accountable not only citizens: other countries as well.
The Foreign Ministry demanded explanations from the US embassy in Moscow for the publication on its website of the itinerary of the opposition demonstrations, called despite the pandemic bans.
But all that information had been present on the Internet for days despite attempts to control it
.
Not only Facebook, VK and Twitter: TikTok is the new gunpowder that ignites the protest despite the official media.
A new generation is discovering the frustrations of their parents and older siblings.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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