Protests continue in Russia, demand ‘Free Navalny!’
https://themilitant.com/2021/02/06/protests-continue-in-russia-demand-free-navalny/
BY ROY LANDERSEN
Vol. 85/No. 6
February 15, 2021
KSENIA KORSHUN VIA REUTERS
For the second week in a row, tens of thousands demonstrated against
Russian President Vladimir Putin, defying a police crackdown Jan. 31.
The protests, demanding the release from prison of Alexei Navalny,
Putin’s main bourgeois political opponent, are the most widespread in
the country in years.
Scores braved temperatures of -40°F in Yakutsk, above. Cops detained
more than 5,000 people in 86 cities. Protests ranged from Vladivostok on
the Pacific Ocean to the Kaliningrad enclave on the Baltic Sea.
“Down with the czar!” several thousand people chanted in St. Petersburg,
Russia’s second-largest city. Some of the biggest rallies were in
Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk, in eastern Siberia, and Yekaterinburg, in
the Urals.
The government doesn’t “allow people to express their opinions,” Masha
Ulyanova told the Washington Post in Moscow. “They are afraid that
they’ll lose power and they will have to live in this poor country that
they have robbed.”
Navalny’s imprisonment has become a lightning rod for anger over
declining living standards, decaying health services, Moscow’s military
interventions abroad and its attacks on political rights at home. Wages
have declined 10% in the past seven years.
Thousands trying to rally outside the jail holding Navalny chanted
“Putin, thief!” referring to an extensively viewed video released by
Navalny’s anti-corruption campaign that reported a luxurious Black Sea
palace had been built for the Russian president. Putin denies ownership
of the complex.
Navalny was detained when he arrived back in Russia from Germany, where
he was recovering from being poisoned by a military-grade nerve toxin,
an attack he says was ordered by Putin. He was sentenced to three and a
half years in prison Feb. 2, for breaching parole terms from a previous
frame-up for “embezzlement.” He is appealing the ruling.
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Emmett F. Fields “ Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do
not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is
an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively,
fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.
” ― Emmett F. Fields