UPDATED to 12 SEPTEMBER 2019
Russia Raids Offices and Homes of Navalny Allies
MOSCOW — In a nationwide crackdown to prevent discontent in Moscow from spreading to far-flung regions, Russian security forces on Thursday raided and searched hundreds of homes and offices across the country of activists affiliated with the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny.
The raids, the biggest operation yet against Mr. Navalny and his supporters, were carried out in more than 40 cities and towns as part of a criminal money-laundering investigation announced in August by the authorities against his Anti-Corruption Foundation. The foundation has been the vanguard of recent street protests in Moscow that led to the arrests of more than 2,000 people.
Mr. Navalny issued a statement denouncing the raids as the biggest police operation, in geographical reach, in Russia’s modern history and a clear attempt to “intimidate” and “demoralize.” He said security officials from the police, the National Guard and the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., had simultaneously raided more than 200 sites in 41 towns and cities.
Also raided as part of the same investigation were the homes of activists in Golos, an independent organization that monitors elections.
Mr. Navalny, the highest-profile Russian opponent of President Vladimir V. Putin, has alarmed the authorities by trying to expand his reach beyond Moscow, traditionally a center of opposition sentiment. . . .
"What Happened At Russia's Missile Test Site? Don't Expect A Straight Answer From Vladimir Putin's Government" by the Editorial Board, The New York Times, 12 August 2019
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Moscow Protests Grow Weekly Against Corrupt Putin Rigged Elections
Criminal Putin Kremlin Russia Police Punch Woman Protester (video):https://www.reuters.com/video/2019/08/12/clip-of-russian-policeman-punching-femal?
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RUSSIA'S PROTESTS CONTINUE TO GROW -- IN A MAJOR WARNING TO VLADIMIR PUTIN
A woman holds a Russian national flag in front of police during a protest in Moscow on Aug. 10. (AP/AP)
The pro-democracy protests that spilled onto the streets of Moscow for the fourth straight weekend last Saturday broke many stereotypes — both about today’s Russia and about mass movements in general. About 60,000 people— triple the size of the previous large rally in late July — gathered on Sakharov Avenue in the dead heat of August, the month when politics here traditionally takes a break. Demonstrators came despite the absence of prominent opposition leaders, nearly of all whom have been jailed after previous protests. The turnout was dampened neither by the brazen police brutality shown over the past few weeks, when thousands were arrested, nor by the Moscow authorities’ efforts to keep people away through official “storm warnings” and hastily organized music festivals.
The biggest stereotype broken this month, however, was the one still repeated by many Western commentators: that Vladimir Putin is the unchallenged leader of Russia, and that there is no alternative to his rule. “Despite political institutions designed to freeze everything that is alive, life still finds a way,” wrote Dmitri Travin, a prominent Russian political analyst. “If we want to close our eyes on reality, we can continue to moan that ‘There is no one but Putin.’ [But] the post-Putin Russia is being born today — and if we want to see it, we will.”
What first brought Muscovites to the streets was the authorities’ decision to block opposition candidates from September’s election for the city legislature. As so often happens, though, the movement has outgrown its original trigger. The protesters’ grievance with the Kremlin is no longer just about ballot access. They are rejecting a corrupt and outdated political system that denies citizens their voice and their very dignity.
Last week that system marked its 20th anniversary. It was on Aug. 9, 1999, that then-President Boris Yeltsin nominated Putin as his prime minister and heir apparent. Like most of the country’s political elite at the time, Russia’s parliament did not take the news seriously — and confirmed Putin to the post, by 233 votes to 84, without much debate in a swift summer session. Most lawmakers expected Putin to be just another temporary placeholder who would soon be forgotten; history has decided otherwise.
Two decades on, a whole generation of Russians has grown up without knowledge or memory of any other reality — of media freedom, political pluralism or competitive elections. A whole generation has never witnessed a changeover of government. For years, the Kremlin maintained its control through shrewd Machiavellian methods that have given Putin’s regime the reputation of a savvy postmodern dictatorship, with successive electoral “victories” engineered through media manipulation, administrative pressure and skillful mobilization of loyal sectors of the population.
Now this is no longer enough. Every authoritarian regime has its expiry date — and it seems that Putin’s is fast approaching. Recent regional elections in various parts of Russia have shown that voters are looking for any alternative to the ruling group. Even with all their media controls and administrative powers, pro-government candidates were headed for a humiliating defeat in the Moscow election — and the authorities chose the only tool they considered safe by disqualifying opposition candidates. It’s not difficult to win an election when your opponents are not on the ballot. . . .
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Hundreds Arrested in Moscow as Criminal Case Is Brought Against Opposition Leader
MOSCOW — As thousands of riot police flooded central Moscow on Saturday to curb protests calling for fair elections, the Russian authorities announced they had opened a criminal money-laundering investigation against an anticorruption organization led by Russia’s most prominent opposition activist.
The case against Aleksei A. Navalny’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Foundation, was opened by the Investigative Committee, Russia’s version of the F.B.I., the state news agency Tass reported. It involved funding for the anticorruption group’s work of 1 billion rubles (around $15 million) in “money obtained by criminal means.”
The money-laundering case is a sharp escalation in the Kremlin’s drive to silence Mr. Navalny, the driving force behind a surge of public dissent in recent weeks, and to snuff out opposition to President Vladimir V. Putin, whose popularity has slumped as Russia’s economy continues to stagnate.
Fearful that even modest peaceful protests could snowball into a serious challenge to Mr. Putin and his so-far secret plans for what will happen when his supposedly final term ends in 2024, the authorities have taken an increasingly hard line against all forms of dissent on the street.
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Mr. Navalny was arrested and sentenced to 30 days in jail last month for organizing an authorized protest after the authorities barred several opposition candidates from running for Moscow’s City Council. Officials claimed that the candidates had falsified signatures on petitions to run, a charge the opposition candidates denied.
A day after an unauthorized election protest in Moscow on July 27, Mr. Navalny was hospitalized with what officials called a “severe allergic reaction” in jail. But his regular physician, Anastasy Vasilyeva, attributed his swollen face and burned eyes to possible poisoning with a “chemical substance.”
On Saturday, police officers grabbed Lyubov Sobol, another prominent opposition figure, as she took a taxi to a protest along the Boulevard Ring, a tree-lined road and pedestrian walkway in the center of Moscow.
OVD-Info, an independent group that monitors arrests, reported that nearly 828 people had been detained by late Saturday afternoon. (Last weekend’s protests drew nearly 1,400 arrests.) Most are likely to be released at the end of the day, but some of those detained in earlier protests have been charged with rioting, a crime punishable by up to 15 years in jail.
Among those detained on Saturday was Igor Kalyapin, a member of President Putin’s human rights commission. In an interview from a police van with TV Rain, an independent online channel, Mr. Kalyapin said that he had not taken part in the protest and had simply been taking video with his phone.
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He said there was “no legal basis whatsoever” for his being grabbed by members of Russia’s National Guard, a security force whose chief, Mr. Putin’s former bodyguard, last year threatened to “make nice, juicy mincemeat” of Mr. Navalny.
He said “there is no legal basis whatsoever” for his arrest by members of Russia’s National Guard, a security force whose chief, Mr. Putin’s former bodyguard, last year threatened to “make nice, juicy mincemeat” of Mr. Navalny.
The huge display of police muscle on Saturday seems to have deterred many people from joining the second weekend protest march, which had been called by Mr. Navalny’s organization and other opposition groups to denounce the exclusion of the dissident candidates from the September election.
After years of denouncing Mr. Navalny and like-minded Russians as a “nonsystem opposition” bent on overturning Russia’s established order, the Kremlin has prompted fury by making it impossible for them to enter the political system.
Konstantin Yankauskas, a would-be candidate barred from taking part in the September elections, was released from prison on Saturday — and then bundled into a police van waiting for him outside the detention center.
❗️Константина Янкаускаса @jankauskas_k задержали на выходе из спецприемника после 8 суток ареста.— Ola Chesare (@olachesare) August 3, 2019
Его увезли в неизвестном направлении pic.twitter.com/nAuQbF291V
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The crowds were far smaller than the July 27 rally outside Moscow City Hall. Instead of congregating in one place, Saturday’s protesters were scattered along an inner ring road. A group of protesters clapped rhythmically as they walked past a statute of Vladimir Vysotsky, a late-Soviet-era singer and counterculture icon.
A man walking past a line of police officers said to them, “You could be in Siberia fighting fires, instead you’re waving nightsticks.” It was an apparent reference to the 7.4 million acres of forest ablaze in Siberia.
Many of those who joined the protest were young Russians who have known nothing but the nearly 20-year rule of Mr. Putin. But some older Russians joined in. Galina Georgievna, a retiree who lives near Pushkin Square, said she came out because of “the thievery, the corruption; people have had it up to here.”
“I feel sorry for young people. I’m already an elderly person, but I feel sorry for them,” she said, adding that “if you leave Moscow, I have no idea how people survive. There are fires in one place, floods in another. Pensions are small.”
As with last weekend’s protest, which the authorities condemned as a “mass disturbance,” Saturday’s march was peaceful, with violence coming only from police officers.
While mostly ignoring the protest in favor of reports about Mr. Putin and the start of an international army games outside Moscow, state-controlled news outlets presented protesters as violent hooligans. Rossiya-24, a state television news channel, reported that rubber-bullet pistols, knives and gas cylinders had been found on the detained. It described the protest as illegal and said participants could face criminal prosecution.
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“We came to defend our rights. We want the candidates to be allowed. You see what is happening in Russia,” said Denis Malygin, 30, an underwriter at a Moscow bank.
He and his girlfriend, Viktoria Vasilyeva, 24, have been attending the recent demonstrations to show their anger at the heavy-handed intolerance of dissent shown by the authorities.
“I experienced it myself,” he said. “I was simply an observer last week. I was filming all of the abuse of power, and I also had my arms roughly pinned to my sides and was put into a paddy wagon.
“Twenty other people and I were delivered to the Nizhegorodsky Police Department,” he added, “where we were kept and released only late at night.”
In Trubnaya Square near the Moscow Circus, a young man in a suit stood silently with a sign reading, “Give Us Back Our Elections,” as riot police officers — called “cosmonauts” because of their helmets and body armor — swept through the esplanade in a pincher operation, trapping sightseers, circus-goers and journalists.
The Moscow city prosecutor’s office warned on Friday that law enforcement agencies would “take all necessary measures to stop provocations, riots and any actions entailing a violation of public security.” . . . .
Copyright 2019 Martin P. All World Rights Expressly Reserved (no claim to The New York Times / The Washington Post content)
