Aleksei Naval'nyj on trial as repression continues

Last night the police broke into his wife Julia's apartment and arrested the activist Ilya Pakhomov. To clear reporters from his apartment, officers pushed some off the stairs. Naval'nyj's brother, Oleg, is also in prison. Arrests also in Novosibirsk, Vladivostok, Krasnoyarsk, Khabarovsk. Three opposition parties unite ahead of the elections in September.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - Alexei Navalnyj appeared yesterday on video from Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where he has been detained for a week, at the trial against him. In his speech, Naval'nyj protested saying that "all this is a great violation of the law. Your Honour, did you read the minutes of the court session at the Khimki police station? It makes a complete joke of the Moscow legal system, it could not possibly have been drafted by people with a legal background ... by now I am used to the fact that a swathe of laws are not applied in my case. (…) It is a demonstration of unlawfulness, made to scare the whole population. But it won't last forever, you won't be able to scare tens of millions of people forever… the truth is on our side”.

In the meantime, arrests and summary trials of participants in the demonstration of last January 23 (photo 1) continue throughout Russia, pending the protests that will be organized on January 31. The pattern followed is that of the Belarusian protests of last year.

Repressions are most intense in the Siberian cities where Naval'nyj has many supporters. Novosibirsk police arrested an independent deputy, Anton Kartavin, along with his collaborator Ilja Pukhovskij, who were taken by policemen who even refused to show their identification cards, as reported by the local staff of the Navalnyi movement. In the same city, a former deputy of the central Duma, Arkady Yankovsky, was arrested, as he himself communicated on his Facebook page.

In Vladivostok, on the shores of the Pacific, mass arrests of Naval’ny supporters began early yesterday morning. Currently about ten people are in prison, as reported by the Sibir.Realii website. Many others were detained at the police station for eight hours without food or water, and then released with reports of invented infractions: violation of anti-Covid regulations; crossing the road outside the pedestrian crossing; etc.

In Buryatia, the Mongolian region of Siberian Russia, blogger Dmitrij Bairov was arrested after he disappeared for hours before being found in a police headquarters; his lawyer intends to sue for kidnapping. Bairov is also well known outside the Asian region, for his inquiries and video posts of the protests in Ulan-Ude last September 23, followed by many people.

Other arrests are reported in Krasnoyarsk and Khabarovsk, the city in the Far East where for a year the population has been demanding the release of the arrested governor, Sergej Furgal. An Orthodox priest, Father Andrei Vinarskij, who had participated in the protest meeting, was also arrested, along with some local journalists.

Last night in Moscow, policemen broke into the apartment where Naval'nyj himself lives (photo 2), and where his wife Julia is staying, with Oleg Naval'nyj, here brother-in-law. Julia Naval'naya screamed through the door that she would not open until her lawyer, Veronika Poljakova, arrived, who was then prevented from entering by the police. They broke down the door and arrested the activist Ilya Pakhomov, who was in the apartment (photo 3). The policemen carried ransacked the flat, staying inside until late at night and commandeering telephones and all means of communication. Naval'nyj's brother was also taken to the police station. In order to clear the reporters outside the front door, the policemen pushed some off the stairs. Oleg Naval'nyj was held in a cell on generic charges.

The protests in defence of Navalnyi are leading to significant political consequences: yesterday the unification of three Russian left parties was announced, Sergei Mironov’s Just Russia, Zakhar Prilepin’s For the Truth and Gennadiy Semigin’s Patriots of Russia (photo 4). These are not Naval’ny supporters, but up to now only apparent opponents of the Putinian regime, who now seem to want to pursue an alternative policy. In the "unification manifesto" presented in Moscow at the Museum of Modern History, the three leaders signed a program of "12 principles of truth, patriotism and justice", with which they intend to propose themselves in the next parliamentary elections in September this year.