Why Protests Taking Place Across Russia

Table of Contents

What has happened?

Russian Opposition leader Alexei Navalny called for nationwide protests on Saturday after he
was arrested last week,
When he returned to Moscow from Germany for the first time since his poisoning in August 2020.
Navalny was further remanded in pre-trial detention for 30 days despite demands by the United States and some European countries to release him.
So far, over 2200 people have been detained in connection with the protests, including Navalny’s wife and close aides.
The police have said the rallies are illegal.

On August 20 last year, Navalny fell ill on a flight back to Moscow from Siberia.
After the plane made an emergency landing, he was first taken to a hospital in the city of Omsk, from where he was later transferred to Berlin’s Charite Hospital while still in a coma.
Tests performed at the German hospital showed the presence of the Soviet-era nerve agent
Navalny has maintained that the poisoning was carried out by the Russian authorities, who have denied any involvement in the attack.

About the protest
Thousands of people have taken to the streets demanding the Navalny’s release.
According to BBC, social media app TikTok has a number of videos posted by Russians supporting the planned protests and urging others to come out.
However, mobile and internet services suffered outages in the day as protesters gathered.

Significantly, more than a dozen protestors have been detained in the city of Khabarovsk in Russia’s far east.
As per a BBCanalysis of the situation unfolding in Russia, “…with economic problems growing, the Kremlin will worry that Mr Navalny could act as a lightning rod for protest sentiment. That explains the police crackdown on Navalny allies ahead of Saturday’s potential protests.”

Navalny, a lawyer-turned-activist, came to prominence in 2008 after he started exposing corruption in Russian politics through a blog.
In 2018, he was barred from standing against Putin in the presidential elections.
He has also been arrested on multiple occasions.
Since he started political campaigning, Navalny has spearheaded many anti-corruption rallies and is considered to be the face of the opposition in Russia,
A country that has long been known to eliminate dissidents and spies by poisoning
The August incident was not the first time Navalny was poisoned.
He was previously hospitalised in 2020 after he suffered an allergic reaction in jail, possibly from an unknown chemical substance.
Two years before that, Navalny was doused with a bright green liquid in the Siberian city of Barnaul by an assailant who pretended to shake his hand.
Last month, Navalny said he had tricked a Russian intelligence operative into confessing to the botched attempt to kill him in August 2020.
Moscow’s Pushkin square is packed with anti-government protesters.
“Freedom to Navalny” they’re chanting, “Putin go away!”

Last month, Russian President Vladimir Putin alleged Navalny “relies on the support of US special services.”
He said, “It’s curious, and in that case, special services indeed need to keep an eye on him.
But that doesn’t mean that there is a need to poison Who would need that?”
Putin, who is entering his 22nd year in power, has even told journalists with a laugh that if Russian operatives wanted to kill Navalny, “they would have probably finished the job.”
Last week, in a feature-length video on YouTube titled, “Putin Palace” in which Navalny alleged that businessmen close to Putin paid for the palace situated at Gelendzhik by the Black Sea.
The video has since then gone viral and has been viewed by over 67 million people.