Russian authorities have arrested vital employees of opposition leader Alexei Navalny ahead of Wednesday’s planned protests. According to those involved, these include spokeswoman Kira Yarmisj and lawyer Lyubov Sobol.
According to the OVD-Info observation group, the police have raided or arrested activists in at least 20 cities. Among other things, agents searched Navalny’s offices in Saint Petersburg, the country’s second city. Officers reportedly pulled lawyer Sobol out of a taxi. Spokeswoman Yarmish reported her arrest on Twitter.
Navalny employees hope that Wednesday will be demonstrated in more than a hundred cities. They say they fear for the life of the opposition leader. This year he ended up in a penal colony and went on a hunger strike there at the end of March. He complained that the authorities are denying him proper medical care.
Police have warned that Wednesday’s planned protests are also illegal. Navalny supporters also took to the streets en masse in January and February to protest against his arrest. That led to the arrest of more than 10,000 people at the time.
Navalny is in jail for not complying with the terms of a suspended sentence. It had been imposed on him because of embezzlement, a statement that he believed was politically motivated. Initially, he did not have to go to prison, but he regularly reported to the authorities.
The latter was no longer possible last year. At the time, he had been poisoned with a nerve poison in his own country and recovered for months in Germany. The Russian authorities arrested him when he got off the plane in Moscow at the beginning of this year. In addition to street protests, this also led to a lot of international criticism.
