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Ukraine’s crisis could reignite protests in Russia, report

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Alexei NavalnyA Moscow court placed Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny under house arrest on Friday as President Vladimir Putin cranked up pressure on his critics, amid government concerns that Ukraine’s crisis could reignite protests in Russia.

The house arrest will start next Monday when Mr Navalny finishes a one-week administrative detention imposed on him on Monday night after his participation in an unsanctioned protest rally.

The court said Mr Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger who briefly became the centre of a wave of protests against Mr Putin’s return to the presidential office in early 2012, had violated the terms of his parole under a five-year suspended prison sentence he was given last year on embezzlement charges. Mr Navalny claimed the charges were politically motivated.

“I believe the new measures are based on trumped-up grounds in order to restrict my political activities,” Russian news agencies quoted him as saying in court.

In the past two years, Mr Navalny has evolved from a blogger to the point man for opposition to the Kremlin.

He is widely seen as the only potential challenger to Mr Putin after he garnered an unexpected 27 per cent in last year’s Moscow mayoral election – coming close to forcing a second-round run-off with the incumbent mayor, Sergei Sobyanin.

His five-year sentence bars him from running in the 2018 presidential race. But Mr Navalny recently became more active again. After the Sochi Winter Olympics, he published a damning report with allegations of corruption surrounding the games.

Last week, he became involved in opposition protests over a court decision that sent seven other activists to prison for participating in a 2012 opposition rally, during which participants resisted riot police. At the protest, Mr Navalny was detained, along with 200 other people.

A spokeswoman for Mr Navalny said that the opposition leader had been barred from using social networking sites and barred from using the internet. He is allowed to speak to his family, she added.

Financial Times

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5 responses to “Ukraine’s crisis could reignite protests in Russia, report”

  1. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Ruthless Russia is Putin and Putin is ruthless Russia.

  2. Guest Avatar
    Guest

    Ruthless Russia is Putin and Putin is ruthless Russia.

  3. MekensehParty Avatar
    MekensehParty

    It has always been predicted that when Syria would loose Lebanon it would fall apart.
    Will the same apply to Russia loosing its main satellite Ukraine?
    Crossing fingers…

  4. MekensehParty Avatar
    MekensehParty

    It has always been predicted that when Syria would loose Lebanon it would fall apart.
    Will the same apply to Russia loosing its main satellite Ukraine?
    Crossing fingers…

  5. 5thDrawer Avatar
    5thDrawer

    Generally, it’s Communism under a new name. In the ‘old system’ around 300 people held the power. Since ‘democracy’, it’s less than that, with Putin as the Big Businessman. Ukraine suddenly became a thorn in his side, since the people there feel the impoverishment as much as the Poles did, when little dictators ‘friendly’ to Russia manage the money. Russia itself trundles along … and ‘the people’ feel the Nationality bit, of course, but they are also noticing some, shall we say, ‘inconsistencies’?
    Any highway to a ‘games’ coming in at 200 million per kilometre seems a little off, and YET it was a great show-place for a month of ‘Russian Relations’. Putin wanted it, it got done, and some few made a tidy profit.
    The people in Crimea have also done rather better, having been largely ’employed’ for a lifetime and now retired there by the Russian Navy.
    The huge problem again – similar to the Middle East – is that some ‘facts’ are coming out about things going on in the ‘upper crust’, and ‘the people’ are noticing. They are NOT happy.
    And of course this ‘house arrest’ is political … as it is anywhere else a voice of dissent has been locked up in an attempt to silence it.

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