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Police and demonstrators clash in Baimak on Wednesday

Photo: Anya Marchenkova / AFP

For days, thousands of people in the Russian republic of Bashkortostan have been protesting against the conviction of local eco-activist Fail Alsynow.

Now nine participants in a demonstration in support of the opposition have been sentenced to prison terms lasting several days.

The local court explained that the defendants took part in “an unauthorized public event” in the small town of Baimak.

The judges therefore imposed prison sentences of between eight and 15 days.

Those now convicted were arrested on January 17 during a demonstration in front of a courthouse in Baimak.

With their protest they wanted to support Alsynov, who had sharply criticized Russia's attack on Ukraine and was sentenced to four years in prison for "incitement to hatred."

Rare protest action – Kremlin weighs it down

According to the Russian human rights group OWD-Info, 6,000 people then took to the streets and around 20 participants in the demonstration were arrested.

According to information from the Russian judiciary the day before, six other participants in a demonstration in support of Alsynov had also been sentenced to several days in prison.

Observers had spoken of one of the largest protests in Russia since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine.

On Friday, despite a massive police presence, Alsynov's supporters gathered again in the regional capital Ufa, as videos on online networks showed.

According to media reports, around 2,000 people took to the streets again.

The police in the regional capital Ufa acted harshly on Friday and arrested several people, as OWD-Info reported.

Videos of peaceful men and women holding hands and chanting circulated on social media.

A little later, pictures of people in prison vans emerged.

Bashkortostan is about 1,300 kilometers east of Moscow;

The ethnic group that gives it its name are the Muslim Bashkirs.

"There are no mass unrest or mass protests there," said Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov.

But in fact, around two months before the planned Russian presidential election, this is one of the largest protest movements in Russia since the start of the war of aggression against Ukraine.

As a rule, the Russian power apparatus immediately suppresses critical demonstrations of any kind.

The current protests began recently in the small town of Baimak, where Alsynov was sentenced to four years in a camp.

The 37-year-old was known in the past as a leader of protests against the mining of a limestone mountain in his homeland.

In Baimak it was about resistance to a planned gold mine.

Alsynov also advocates greater autonomy for the republic and the protection of the Bashkir language.

In the trial, the Russian judiciary accused him of fomenting ethnic hatred because he allegedly used a racist expression in a speech.

His supporters see this as a pretext to silence Alsynov.

aeh/AFP/dpa/Reuters