More than a hundred people were arrested during a demonstration that took place in Moscow to support the Russian opposition figure, sentenced to prison. The political opponent of the Kremlin was arrested later in the day in Moscow on his way to a demonstration specifically organized to denounce the judicial harassment against him.
Who is Alexey Navalny ?
Aged only 38, married with two kids, this charismatic speaker is the main opposition figure against Vladimir Putin who is sorely lacking real opponents.
”Alexey Navalny is the bane of the Kremlin” said an expert in Eastern Studies.
A lawyer by training, and a YALE graduate, Navalny has continued to challenge the Russian President Vladimir Putin. A battle that earned him, he said, ”his conviction” on Tuesday to three years suspended sentence. Russian justice will have been less lenient with his brother, Oleg, who was sentenced to three and a half years in prison for the same case for the diversion of nearly 400,000 euros at the expense of a Russian subsidiary of the French company Yves Rocher.
This decision has not managed to silence the young politician. On leaving the court, Alexey Navalny has called on supporters to protest against the rising power of the Kremlin, which “does not deserve to exist and must be destroyed”.
Local media calls him the number one enemy of the Kremlin. A figure of the opposition with presidential ambitions. In a few years, Navalny has become the ”black rock” standing in the way of the Kremlin through his blog and a website created to expose corruption. Its popularity has increased in December 2011, during the legislative that triggered an unprecedented protest in Russia. Facing him, a moribund opposition weakened by a decade under Vladimir Putin.
The mayor of Moscow had warned, in a previous time, that the police would prevent any “unauthorized demonstration” and, in fact, police vans were present in the early evening in and around the Manezhnaya Square where the rally should took place. But the demonstration took place and nearly 170 people were arrested at the rally according to local news station. Among them, several journalists, young students and some of whom have been released after few hours.
Navalny, who was placed under house arrest since February 2014, had made a significant breakthrough in the Mayor of Moscow elections, in September 2013 (where the Kremlin had left as a guarantee of a ”free” and democratic election). He won nearly 30% of the votes without having the administrative and material resources as the government candidate, Sergei Sobyanin.
Alexey is a young and enthousiastic politician and experts believe that his election score was a result of his outstanding field campaigns on social networks about key challenges that the city faces such as the fight against corruption and against immigration.
Russian opposition and politically-active youth affirm that the protests of today intended to denounce the arbitrariness of the Russian justice rule in this case as a political move to make Navalny ”step out” of the political scene for a while.
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