Tag: Navalny

In First Interview From Jail, an Upbeat Navalny Discusses Jail Life

Post author By
Post date August 26, 2021

MOSCOW — Russia’s most famous prisoner, the opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, spends much of his time tidying his cellblock, reading letters and visiting the mess for meals, with porridge often on the menu.

But perhaps the most maddening thing, he suggested, is being forced to watch Russian state TV and selected propaganda films for more than eight hours a day in what the authorities call an “awareness raising” program that has replaced hard labor for political prisoners.

“Reading, writing or doing anything else” is prohibited, Mr. Navalny said of the forced screen time. “You have to sit in a chair and watch TV.” And if an inmate nods off, he said, the guards shout, “Don’t sleep, watch!”

In an interview with The New York Times, his first with a news organization since his arrest in January, Mr. Navalny talked about his life in prison, about why Russia has cracked down so hard on the opposition and dissidents, and about his conviction that “Putin’s regime,” as he calls it, is doomed to collapse.

Mr. Navalny started a major opposition movement to expose high-level corruption and challenge President Vladimir V. Putin at the polls. He was imprisoned in March after he returned to Russia from Germany knowing he was facing a parole violation for a conviction in a case seen as politically motivated. As was well chronicled at the time, he was out of the country to receive medical treatment after being poisoned by Russian agents with the chemical weapon Novichok, according to Western governments.

Mr. Navalny has not been entirely mute since his incarceration in Penal Colony No. 2, just east of Moscow. Through his lawyers, who visit him regularly, he has sent out occasional social media posts.

Nor is he being actively muzzled by the Kremlin. When asked about Mr. Navalny’s social media presence on Tuesday, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, said that it was “not our business” if Mr. Navalny spoke out.

But the written exchange of questions and answers covering 54 handwritten pages is by far his most comprehensive and wide-ranging account.

In today’s Russia, Mr. Navalny made clear, hours spent watching state television and movies chosen by the warden are the experience of a political prisoner, a status Amnesty International has assigned to Mr. Navalny. Gone are the shifts of heavy labor in mining or forestry and the harrying by criminals and guards alike that was the hallmark of the Soviet gulag for political prisoners.

“You might imagine tattooed muscle men with steel teeth carrying on with knife fights to take the best cot by the window,” Mr. Navalny said. “You need to imagine something like a Chinese labor camp, where everybody marches in a line and where video cameras are hung everywhere. There is constant control and a culture of snitching.”

Despite his circumstances, Mr. Navalny was upbeat about Russia’s future prospects, and he outlined his strategy for achieving political change through the electoral system even in an authoritarian state.

“The Putin regime is an historical accident, not an inevitability,” he wrote, adding, “It was the choice of the corrupt Yeltsin family,” a reference to former President Boris N. Yeltsin’s appointment of Mr. Putin as acting president in December 1999. “Sooner or later, this mistake will be fixed, and Russia will move on to a democratic, European path of development. Simply because that is what the people want.”

As he has before, Mr. Navalny criticized Europe and the United States for the economic sanctions it has imposed on Russia for its meddling abroad and its repression of dissidents, including Mr. Navalny. He said sanctions harmed ordinary Russians and risked alienating a broad constituency inside Russia that is a natural ally.

Sanctions, he said, should target only the top oligarchs who prop up Mr. Putin’s government, instead of the dozens of largely obscure figures who have been hit so far. The truly powerful have largely avoided sanctions, he said, by retaining “an army of lawyers, lobbyists and bankers, fighting for the right of owners of dirty and bloody money to remain unpunished.”

Through the 20th century and earlier, prison in Russia was a crucible that forged or broke dissidents and writers, molded leaders and crushed pluralistic politics.

The modern experience of a Russian political prisoner, Mr. Navalny said, is mostly “psychological violence,” with mind-numbing screen time playing a big role.

Mr. Navalny described five daily sessions of television watching for inmates, the first starting immediately after morning calisthenics, breakfast and sweeping the yard.

After some free time, there’s a two-hour spell in front of the screen, lunch, then more screen time, dinner, and then more TV time in the evening. During one afternoon session, playing chess or backgammon is an acceptable alternative.

“We watch films about the Great Patriotic War,” Mr. Navalny said, referring to World War II, “or how one day, 40 years ago, our athletes defeated the Americans or Canadians.”

During these sessions, he said, “I most clearly understand the essence of the ideology of the Putin regime: The present and the future are being substituted with the past — the truly heroic past, or embellished past, or completely fictional past. All sorts of past must constantly be in the spotlight to displace thoughts about the future and questions about the present.”

The approach of lengthy, enforced television watching, while taken to extremes at Penal Colony No. 2, is not unique to the site, where inmates in politically hued cases have been incarcerated before.

It sprang from a penal reform in Russia begun in 2010 to boost guards’ control over inmates through their day and to reduce the sway of prison gangs. The intent is not so much brainwashing as control, experts on the Russian prison system say.

“Everything is organized so that I am under maximum control 24 hours a day,” Mr. Navalny said. He said he had not been assaulted or threatened by fellow inmates but estimated that about one-third were what are known in Russian prisons as “activists,” those who serve as informants to the warden.

During his first weeks in the penal colony, Mr. Navalny’s limbs numbed, either from lingering effects of the poisoning or from a back injury from riding in a prison van. He also went on a 24-day hunger strike, raising alarms about his health.

His neurological symptoms eased when guards stopped waking him hourly at night, ostensibly to ensure he wasn’t plotting an escape.

“I now understand why sleep deprivation is one of the favorite tortures of the special services,” he said. “No traces remain, and it’s impossible to tolerate.”

He said he gets along well with other inmates, and that they sometimes cook snacks in a microwave.

“When we cook, I always remember the classic scene from ‘Goodfellas’ when the mafia bosses cook pasta in a prison cell,” he said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have such a cool pot, and pasta is forbidden. Still, it’s fun.”

Mr. Navalny, 45, conceded that he has struggled to remain visible in Russian politics through a tumultuous period as the government has clamped down on the opposition and the news media.

The protests that erupted after disputed Belarusian elections last year spooked the Kremlin, he suggested. The Putin government’s other worry, he said, was the electoral strategy he has devised and calls “smart voting.”

Under the strategy, Mr. Navalny’s organization endorses the candidates it thinks have a chance of winning in regional and parliamentary elections, which will be held next month.

The Kremlin was so concerned about the upcoming elections, he said, that it engineered a crackdown this year not just on his group and other activists but on moderate opposition politicians, civil society groups and independent news media outlets like Meduza, Proekt and Dozhd television.

Mr. Navalny suggested that while the crackdown may prove to be a tactical success for Mr. Putin, it may also be a long-term liability.

“Putin solved his tactical question: not allowing us to take away the majority in the Duma,” Mr. Navalny said, speaking of the Russian Parliament’s lower house. “But to achieve this, he had to completely change the political system, to shift to a principally different, far harsher level of authoritarianism.”

Mr. Navalny suggested the move underscored a principal weakness of Mr. Putin’s political system. While leftists and nationalists are represented by parties loyal to Mr. Putin, there is no stable, pro-Kremlin center-right party representing the country’s emerging middle class of relatively prosperous, city-dwelling Russians.

“Opposition exists in Russia not because Aleksei Navalny or somebody else commands it from a headquarters,” Mr. Navalny said, “but because about 30 percent of the country — mostly the educated, urban population — doesn’t have political representation.”

When what he called the reactionary anomaly of Mr. Putin’s rule fades, Russia will revert to democratic governance, Mr. Navalny said. “We are specific, like any nation, but we are Europe. We are the West.”

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting from Washington.

Tags discusses, interview, Jail, Life, Navalny, Prison, Upbeat

World News

Putin, Navalny Protests Information: Dwell Updates

Post author By
Post date April 21, 2021

Here’s what you need to know:

VideoPresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said in an address on Wednesday that the country’s response would be “asymmetrical, quick and tough” against nations that threatened its security interests.CreditCredit…Photo by Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia on Wednesday delivered an annual address replete with threats against the West but, despite intense tensions with Ukraine, stopped short of announcing new military or foreign policy moves.

Russia’s response will be “asymmetric, fast and tough” if it is forced to defend its interests, Mr. Putin said, pointing to what he claimed were Western efforts at regime change in neighboring Belarus as another threat to Russia’s security.

He pledged that Russia “wants to have good relations with all participants of international society,” even as he noted that Russia’s modernized nuclear weapons systems were at the ready.

“The organizers of any provocations threatening the fundamental interests of our security will regret their deeds more than they have regretted anything in a long time,” Mr. Putin told a hall of governors and members of Parliament. “I hope no one gets the idea to cross the so-called red line with Russia — and we will be the ones to decide where it runs in every concrete case.”

Mr. Putin’s speech had been widely anticipated, with about 100,000 Russian troops massed on Ukraine’s border and Ukraine’s president warning openly of the possibility of war. Some analysts had speculated that Mr. Putin might use his annual state of the nation address to announce a pretext for sending troops into Ukraine.

But that possible outcome did not come to pass, even as Russia’s enormous military presence near Ukraine’s borders showed no sign of receding. Mr. Putin also made no reference to the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, whose supporters were holding protests across the country on Wednesday.

Instead, Mr. Putin spent most of his speech on domestic issues, acknowledging Russians’ discontent with the hardships of the pandemic. He outlined programs to subsidize summer camp for children, smooth the system for child-support payments to single mothers and move more social services online.

Still, it was too early to tell whether Mr. Putin, 68, was pulling back from the brink. Now in his third decade in power, he appears more convinced than ever of his special, historic role as the father of a reborn Russian nation, fighting at home and abroad against a craven, hypocritical, morally decaying West.

“This sense of superiority mixed with arrogance gives him a feeling of power, and this is dangerous,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a Russian analyst who has studied Mr. Putin for years. “When you think you are more powerful and more wise than everyone else around you, you think you have a certain historical mandate for more wide-ranging action.”

Mr. Putin has made moves in recent weeks that, even by his standards, signal an escalation in his conflict with those he perceives as enemies, foreign and domestic. Russian prosecutors last week filed suit to outlaw Mr. Navalny’s organization, a step that could result in the most intense wave of political repression in post-Soviet Russia. And in Russia’s southwest, Mr. Putin has built up a military force, the Kremlin has indicated, that could be prepared to move into neighboring Ukraine.

In Washington, the Biden administration reacted mildly to Mr. Putin’s tough words.

“We don’t take anything President Putin says personally,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said when asked for a response. “We have tough skin.”

Asked if the sharpened rhetoric from Mr. Putin would affect the prospects for a possible meeting with President Biden later this year, Ms. Psaki said discussions were ongoing. “Obviously,” she said, “it requires all parties having an agreement that we’re going to have a meeting and we issued that invitation.”

VideoPresident Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine warned of a possible war with Russia in an address to citizens on Tuesday evening. He directed comments to President Vladimir V. Putin and called for international support.CreditCredit…Ukrainian Presidential Press Service, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine addressed his nation on Tuesday evening, warning citizens of the possibility of war. He addressed President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia directly, urging him to step back from the brink and proposing that the two meet.

The unusual videotaped appearance by Mr. Zelensky — a former comedian elected in 2019 on a promise to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine — was the clearest signal yet that Ukraine is girding for the possibility of a full-fledged war with Russia. Moscow’s buildup of troops on the Ukrainian border, he said, had created “all the preconditions for escalation.”

“Does Ukraine want war? No. Is it ready for it? Yes,” Mr. Zelensky said. “Our principle is simple: Ukraine does not start a war first, but Ukraine always stands to the last man.”

It appeared to be no coincidence that Mr. Zelensky’s address came on the eve of Mr. Putin’s annual state of the nation address on Wednesday. At the end of his video, Mr. Zelensky switched from Ukrainian to Russian, speaking to Mr. Putin directly. He pushed back at Mr. Putin’s contention that Russian forces would be used in Ukraine only if the Russian-speaking population in the east was threatened, and proposed a summit in the war-torn eastern region known as Donbas.

“It is impossible to bring peace on a tank,” Mr. Zelensky said.

“I am ready,” he continued, “to invite you to meet anywhere in the Ukrainian Donbas where there is war.”

There was no immediate response from the Kremlin to Mr. Zelensky’s invitation.

Credit…Pavel Korolyov/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Protesters in Vladivostok, a major port on the eastern tip of Russia, had no need to hear President Vladimir V. Putin’s annual keynote address on Wednesday, filled with promises of a better future for Russians. They knew what they see as the main issues facing the country would not get mentioned.

“Freedom to political prisoners,” they chanted as they marched through the city center, according to videos posted on social media. “Freedom to Navalny!” they screamed, referring to Aleksei A. Navalny, the Kremlin critic, who is now on a hunger strike in a Russian prison. “Down with the Czar!” they chanted. The police warned protesters through loudspeakers that they could be arrested. “We will not stay silent,” was their response.

Mr. Putin was still speaking when people started gathering on main squares in the country’s Far East — where protests started before rallies extended across the vast nation of 11 time zones.

By the time Mr. Putin had finished, eight people were already detained in the remote city of Magadan, according to Vesma, a local news website. About 40 people came out to protest in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, the capital of the Kamchatka region, with no arrests reported.

In Irkutsk, a major city further west toward Moscow, hundreds of people marched through the city chanting “Freedom to Navalny!” and “Irkutsk, come out!” The police in Irkutsk detained 11 people.

By later in the day, at least 1,226 people had been detained across the country, according to OVD-Info, a rights group that tracks arrests.

About 10,000 people were arrested nationwide in two days of pro-Navalny rallies in January, according to the same group, suggesting that Wednesday’s turnout was lighter.

In Moscow near the Kremlin, several thousand protesters turned out in the gathering dusk. They included Mr. Navalny’s wife, Yulia Navalnaya, who was greeted with chants of “Yulia!”

The Moscow police used loudspeakers warning the protesters to disperse, but there was no sign of heavy-handed tactics to crush the demonstrations. By the end of the day the OVD-Info group said only 23 arrests had been reported in Russia’s capital.

Вот как выглядит шествие в Иркутске сверху (и на фоне красивых деревянных домов в центре города)

Видео: Зоя Кузнецова pic.twitter.com/CJYpQggBUx

— Дождь (@tvrain) April 21, 2021

The last wave of protests were sparked by Mr. Navalny’s return to Russia in January from Germany, where he had been treated after being poisoned with a military-grade nerve agent. Since Mr. Navalny’s return, the Russian government has undertaken an aggressive crackdown on dissent, raising the risks for anyone sympathetic to the protest movement.

Dozens of opposition activists were arrested in 20 cities across Russia ahead of the Wednesday rallies. Some of the activists were beaten and sentenced to administrative arrests, according to OVD Info. Many were members of Mr. Navalny’s political organization, but some were arrested simply for having shared social media posts about the rallies.

Among those detained were two prominent associates of Mr. Navalny: his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh; and Lyubov Sobol.

In recent weeks, the Russian authorities have conducted raids on Mr. Navalny’s offices across the country, looking for leaflets and other materials calling for protests. Those items would presumably be used in the Kremlin’s drive to have his organization labeled “extremist,” which would expose its members to potentially lengthy prison terms.

In Kurgan, a city in central Russia, an unidentified person sneaked into Mr. Navalny’s office on Monday morning and destroyed a radiator, flooding the premises.

Under various pretexts, the authorities in cities across Russia blocked central squares and streets. In Yekaterinburg, they rescheduled a Victory Day parade rehearsal to ensure that it overlapped with a scheduled protest. In Kostroma, the central square was closed down, ostensibly for pest control measures.

In universities across the country, students were ordered to sit for unscheduled tests and other gatherings with mandatory attendance, TV Rain, an independent news station reported on Tuesday.

The authorities in Moscow denied Mr. Navalny’s allies a permit for the rally they have planned for Wednesday evening, citing coronavirus concerns. The Prosecutor General’s office warned parents that they would be subject to fines and arrest if their underage children are detained at a rally.

More than 450,000 people nationwide registered online to declare their intent to take part in demonstrations against Mr. Navalny’s incarceration and treatment in prison. More than 100,000 people did so in Moscow, and more than 50,000 in St. Petersburg.

Correction: April 21, 2021

An earlier version of this item misstated Irkutsk’s location relative to the Kamchatka region of Russia. It is further west toward Moscow, not further east.

Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times
Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times

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Credit…Yuri Kochetkov/EPA, via Shutterstock

Russia is moving ahead with efforts to outlaw the organization led by the opposition figure Aleksei A. Navalny, a step that could result in the most intense wave of political repression in the post-Soviet era. But supporters of the jailed opposition leader say they are determined to take to the streets.

Opponents of President Vladimir V. Putin have called for protests across Russia on Wednesday in support of Mr. Navalny, whose allies say he is on a hunger strike and near death in a Russian prison. The police were expected to intervene forcefully to break up the protests, which started in the country’s Far East even before Mr. Putin had finished delivering his state of the nation speech.

Mr. Putin has rarely mentioned Mr. Navalny by name and did not do so in his speech. He did not refer to him in any way.

Mr. Navalny is insisting that he be allowed to be seen by doctors of his choosing. A lawyer who visited him, Vadim Kobzev, said on Tuesday that Mr. Navalny’s arms were punctured and bruised after three nurses had unsuccessfully tried six times to hook him up to an intravenous drip.

“If you saw me now, you would laugh,” Mr. Navalny said in a letter that his team posted to social media. “A skeleton walking, swaying, in its cell.”

United Nations human rights investigators added their voices Wednesday to the demand that Mr. Navalny receive better medical treatment. Independent experts appointed by the world body’s Human Rights Council in Geneva said in a statement that they believed “Mr. Navalny’s life is in serious danger,” and called on the Russian authorities to allow his “urgent medical evacuation from Russia.”

The Kremlin depicts Mr. Navalny as an agent of American influence, and Russian prosecutors filed a lawsuit on Friday to declare his organization “extremist” and illegal.

The extremism designation, which a Moscow court will consider in a secret trial starting next week, would effectively force Russia’s most potent opposition movement underground and could result in yearslong prison terms for pro-Navalny activists.

The White House has warned the Russian government that it “will be held accountable” if Mr. Navalny dies in prison. Western officials — and Mr. Navalny’s supporters and allies — reject the idea that he is acting on another country’s behalf.

But in the Kremlin’s logic, Mr. Navalny is a threat to Russian statehood, doing the West’s bidding by undermining Mr. Putin. It is Mr. Putin who is keeping Russia stable by maintaining a balance between competing factions in Russia’s ruling elite, said Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

“If Putin leaves, a battle between different groups breaks out, and Russia withdraws into itself, has no time for the rest of the world and no longer gets in anyone’s way,” Mr. Trenin said. “The West is, of course, using Navalny, and will use him to create problems for Putin and, in the longer term, help Putin become history in one way or another.”

Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

Several thousand protesters crowded the broad sidewalks near the Kremlin on Wednesday, at one point holding up their cellphones in a symbol of antigovernment defiance.

They called for the jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny to be freed, but it was a sense of widespread injustice that brought many of them out into the streets despite the threat of arrest.

“I didn’t come out concretely because of Aleksei Navalny — I came out more for myself,” said Svetlana Kosatkina, a 64-year-old real estate agent. “I can’t stand this whole situation of lawlessness and just total humiliation.”

Protesters took up the sidewalks across the street from the exhibition hall next to the Kremlin where President Vladimir V. Putin had given his annual state of the nation speech earlier in the day. They chanted “Go away!” — referring to Mr. Putin; and “Release him!” — referring to Mr. Navalny.

Yulia Navalnaya, Mr. Navalny’s wife, joined the protesters on the boulevard ring in Central Moscow, and was greeted with chants of “Yulia!”

Riot police officers were out in force and blared warnings to disperse through loudspeakers, but they avoided scenes of brutality that could have cast a shadow over Mr. Putin’s speech.

They also effectively kept parts of the city blocked off so that sporadic groups of protesters could never unite into a large crowd.

The outcome, in Moscow at least: The authorities managed to weaken the overall impression the protest made without arresting hundreds of people, as had been done in previous demonstrations.

Only 23 people were arrested in Moscow, according to OVD Info, an independent monitoring group. In earlier demonstrations, the police would typically detain more than 1,000 people.

A 33-year-old advertising professional among the protesters on Wednesday — who gave only his first name, Denis, fearing retribution — blamed Mr. Putin for his current unemployment. It was Mr. Putin’s aggressive foreign policy, he said, that drove away foreign investment and limited young Russians’ hopes for the future.

He had come to the protest with a book, in case he had to spend the night at a police station.

“We are isolated now,” he said. “I don’t see a future for this system. I don’t want to be an enemy to the outside world.”

Credit…Alexei Druzhinin/Sputnik, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

In a speech filled with bluster and bromides against the West, President Vladimir V. Putin on Wednesday lingered on a grievance that has not gained much traction outside the Russian state news media: an unfounded accusation that the C.I.A. has been plotting to assassinate the leader of Belarus.

Even as he raised the subject, Mr. Putin acknowledged that it was not being taken seriously outside Russia.

“Characteristically, even such lamentable actions are not discussed in the so-called collective West,” Mr. Putin said. “They pretend nothing happened.”

Over the weekend, Russia’s domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service, arrested two men who it said were plotting to murder President Aleksandr Lukashenko of Belarus and to seize television and radio stations.

It said the men had coordinated with U.S. and Polish intelligence agencies and come to Russia to meet Belarusian generals sympathetic to the opposition. The Russian authorities released video that showed the men casually discussing their improbable plot over a meal at a Moscow restaurant.

One of the men, Aleksandr Feduta, is a former spokesman for Mr. Lukashenko. The other, Yuras Zyankovich, has dual U.S. and Belarusian citizenship. The United States and Polish governments denied any role in a murder and coup plot in Belarus.

The arrests aligned with Mr. Putin’s casting of Russia in his state of the nation speech on Wednesday as victimized and pressured by a hypocritical and aggressive Western world that poses imminent threats.

The encroaching West, Mr. Putin said, has “crossed all the boundaries.”

Policies to pressure Russia that were previously limited to economic sanctions “have been reborn as something more dangerous,” he said. “I have in mind the recent facts that came to light of a direct attempt to organize a coup in Belarus and the murder of the leader of that country.”

Credit…Amr Alfiky/The New York Times

The election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president of the United States, despite his promise to be tough on Russia, initially gave the Kremlin hope, analysts say.

He was seen as more professional, reliable and pragmatic than President Donald J. Trump, with a worldview shaped by a Cold War era of diplomacy in which Washington and Moscow engaged as equal superpowers with a responsibility for global security. In their first phone call in January, Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin agreed to extend the New Start arms-control treaty, a Russian foreign policy goal that the Kremlin had not been able to achieve with Mr. Trump.

Then came the television interview in March in which Mr. Biden assented when asked whether Mr. Putin was a “killer.” A month later, that moment — to which Russian officials and commentators responded with a squall of prime-time-televised, anti-American fury — looks like a turning point. It was followed by last week’s raft of American sanctions against Russia, combined with Mr. Biden’s call for a summit meeting with Mr. Putin, which to many Russians looked like a crude American attempt to negotiate from a position of strength.

“This is seen as an unacceptable situation — you won’t chase us into the stall with sanctions,” said Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, a think tank.

How far Mr. Putin will go in striking back against the West’s real or imagined hostility is an open question. In the state news media, the mood music is dire. On the flagship weekly news show on the Rossiya 1 channel on Sunday, the host Dmitri Kiselyov closed a segment on Mr. Putin’s showdown with Mr. Biden by reminding viewers of Poseidon — a weapon in Russia’s nuclear arsenal that Mr. Putin revealed three years ago.

“Russia’s armed forces are ready to test-fire a nuclear torpedo that would cause radioactive tsunamis capable of flooding enemy cities and making them uninhabitable for decades,” a translation of a Danish newspaper report intoned.

Still, there are signs that Mr. Putin does not want tensions with the West to spiral out of control.

As Europe and the United States scrambled to assess the Russian troop buildup in late March, Russia’s top military officer, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, spoke on the phone with his American counterpart, Gen. Mark A. Milley. On Monday, Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of Mr. Putin’s Security Council, discussed the prospect of a presidential summit with Jake Sullivan, Mr. Biden’s national security adviser. And the Kremlin said this week that Mr. Putin would speak at Mr. Biden’s online climate change meeting on Thursday.

Ms. Stanovaya, the analyst, says she was convinced that Mr. Putin is more interested than his hawkish advisers in looking for ways to work with the United States. She pointed to Mr. Putin’s determination to return Russia to the ranks of great powers.

“Putin very much believes in his mission as a great historic figure with responsibility not only for Russia, but also for global security,” Ms. Stanovaya said. “He doesn’t understand how it is that the American president doesn’t feel the same way.”

Credit…Maxar Technologies, via Associated Press

The Russian authorities closed airspace to commercial traffic near the Ukrainian border starting on Tuesday in another sign of rising military tensions between Russia and Ukraine.

The warning to commercial pilots covers parts of the Crimean Peninsula — annexed by Russia seven years ago — and international airspace over the Black Sea. It formalized what had already become obvious: The region is in the grips of an increasingly ominous military crisis.

Ukraine objected last week to Russia’s closing of areas in the Black Sea to shipping, a ban that the U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, on Monday called an “unprovoked escalation in Moscow’s ongoing campaign to undermine and destabilize Ukraine.”

Over the past month, Russia has massed the largest military force along Ukraine’s eastern border and in Crimea since the outset of war in 2014, according to Western governments. Analysts say that the deliberately high visibility of the buildup indicates that its purpose is more a warning to the West than a prelude to invasion.

“They are deploying in a very visible way,” said Michael Kofman, a senior researcher at CNA, a policy research group in Arlington, Va. “They are doing it overtly, so we can see it. It is intentional.”

The Russian military says it is conducting exercises in response to Ukrainian threats to two Russian-backed separatist regions and to what it calls heightened NATO military activity in the Black Sea area.

Military tensions have also risen elsewhere. On Tuesday, Russia’s Air Force flew two nuclear-capable Tu-160 strategic bombers over the Baltic Sea for eight hours. In the Arctic Ocean, the Northern Fleet has been conducting a huge naval drill, the Defense Ministry said.

Credit…Sergey Ponomarev for The New York Times

President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has often sought to bolster domestic support through rally-around-the-flag, aggressive foreign policy moves. But on Wednesday he opened his annual address to the nation by focusing on the bread-and-butter economic issues that polls show most worry Russians.

He rattled off a laundry list of social subsidies that he said his government would begin to provide to new mothers, single parents and low-income families.

“For our entire history, our people triumphed, overcoming challenges thanks to their singular cohesion, their spiritual and moral values that in a number of countries are forgotten, but we on the contrary have strengthened,” Mr. Putin said.

He outlined programs to subsidize summer camp for children, smooth the system for child-support payments to single mothers and move more social services online.

While Russia is still in the throes of a coronavirus wave, Mr. Putin minimized the threat and said Russia would swivel to “healing the wounds” and shoring up the economy. He also laid out a requirement that Russian laboratories be ready to prepare tests for potential new infectious diseases within four days of their discovery.

Mr. Putin traditionally starts his yearly address with a focus on economic issues, and despite rising tensions with the West, this year was no different.

The Russian leader is aware that empty wallets can add fuel to protest movements and that the stagnating economy is taking a toll on support for his government. Russians’ average take-home wages adjusted for inflation have been declining since the Ukraine crisis in 2014, dropping 10 percent since then.

Analysts say it is no coincidence that protests have seeped out of the wealthy cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg to Russia’s far-flung provinces, which are feeling the economic pain more acutely.

The Russian budget fell into deficit during the pandemic last year, but in the first quarter of 2021 was again in surplus, buoyed by rising oil prices. This has provided Mr. Putin room for maneuver on populist policies before parliamentary elections scheduled for the fall.

Over the years, he has padded his speeches with populist announcements that are often repetitions or minor updates on long-running policies.

Russia, for example, has for years paid a bonus of around $10,000 to women for the birth of a child, a policy intended to help reverse Russia’s long demographic decline.

Credit…Dimitar Dilkoff/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

United Nations human rights experts, expressing fears for the life of the opposition leader, Aleksei A. Navalny, called on Russia to allow his urgent evacuation for medical treatment abroad.

“We believe Mr. Navalny’s life is in serious danger,” the group of four U.N. experts said in a statement on Wednesday. They cited the attack with a nerve agent last year that nearly killed him, which Western governments believe was ordered by the Kremlin, and his incarceration in conditions that in their view could amount to torture.

These “are all part of a deliberate pattern of retaliation against him for his criticism of the Russian government and a gross violation of his human rights,” according to the experts, including specialists on freedom of speech, torture, extrajudicial killings and the right to health.

“There is no valid legal basis for Mr. Navalny’s arrest, trial and imprisonment,” the experts said. Mr. Navalny has been detained since last month after being convicted of breaching bail conditions while receiving medical treatment in Germany for the Novichok nerve agent attack on him.

Their statement called for his “urgent medical evacuation from Russia.”

Although Mr. Navalny had been transferred to a prison hospital, authorities have not allowed him access to doctors of his own choosing, the rights experts noted.

The Russian authorities’ “apparent violations of the prohibition of torture or other ill-treatment, his right to counsel, and most notably his right to prompt and effective medical care while in detention only deepen our already profound concerns about Mr. Navalny’s life and safety,” the experts said.

Under international law, they said, the Russian government “must take all necessary measures to protect Mr. Navalny’s physical and mental health and well-being.”

Tags Live, Navalny, News, Protests, Putin, Updates

Politics

White Home warns Russia will face penalties if Alexei Navalny dies

Post author By
Post date April 19, 2021

White House warns Russia will face consequences if Alexei Navalny dies

WASHINGTON – White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Sunday the Biden government warned the Russian government not to let jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny die in custody.

“We have told the Russian government that what happens to Mr. Navalny in their care is their responsibility and that they will be held accountable by the international community,” Sullivan said on CNN’s State of the Union program.

“We have announced that there will be consequences if Mr Navalny dies,” he added.

Navalny flew to Russia from Berlin earlier this year after recovering for nearly six months from nerve agent poisoning that occurred last August. He was arrested at passport control and later sentenced to more than two years in prison.

Last month, the United States sanctioned seven members of the Russian government for alleged poisoning and subsequent imprisonment of Navalny. The sanctions were the first to be directed against Moscow under Biden’s leadership. The Trump administration has taken no action against Russia because of the situation in Navalny.

State Secretary Antony Blinken wrote in a separate statement that the sanctions would send “a clear signal” to Russia that the use of chemical weapons and human rights violations are having grave consequences.

“Any use of chemical weapons is unacceptable and violates international standards,” wrote Blinken.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied playing a role in Navalny’s poisoning.

A spokesman for Navalny said the Russian opposition leader’s health had deteriorated since his detention. Navalny went on a hunger strike to force his prison guards to access outside medical care to relieve back pain and leg pain. A Navalny lawyer said he had two spinal hernias, AP reported.

Continue reading: The US was concerned about the deteriorating health of incarcerated Kremlin critic Navalny

The Russian authorities have previously stated that they have offered Navalny adequate medical care but continue to refuse it. The prison has refused to allow a doctor, chosen by Navalny, from outside the facility to carry out his treatment.

On Saturday, doctor Yaroslav Aschikhmin said the test results he received from Navalny’s family show that the detained critic has elevated potassium levels that can trigger cardiac arrest. Navalny also has elevated creatinine levels which indicate possible kidney failure.

“Our patient could die at any moment,” said Ashikhmin in a Facebook post.

In an interview with the BBC on Sunday, the Russian Ambassador to Britain accused Navalny of dramatizing his condition to attract attention.

“Of course he can’t die in prison, but I can say that Mr. Navalny is acting absolutely like a hooligan,” said Andrei Kelin. “His goal for all of this is to get him noticed, including by saying that his left hand is sick today and his leg is sick tomorrow and all that stuff, so the journalists pay attention.”

“Navalny was treated in the hospital, which is not far from where he is serving his sentence, and I understand he is no longer complaining,” added Kelin.

Last week, the Biden administration hit Russia with a string of US sanctions for human rights abuses, widespread cyberattacks and attempts to influence the US elections.

In a speech on Thursday, Biden said he was ready to take further action against Moscow.

“If Russia continues to interfere with our democracy, I am ready to take further action to respond. It is my responsibility as President of the United States to do so,” said White House Biden.

“It was clear to President Putin that we could have gone further, but I decided against it, I chose to be proportionate,” Biden said of the measures, adding that he did not “want to initiate an escalation cycle and.” Conflict with Russia. “

Continue reading: The West is waiting for Putin’s next move as tensions between Russia and Ukraine mount

Biden also said that in a phone conversation with Putin, he suggested that the two meet in person in Europe this summer to discuss a number of pressing issues.

Sullivan told CNN that the Biden-Putin summit would be discussed but would not provide additional details.

“There’s no summit on the books right now, it’s something we’re talking about. Obviously, this summit would have to be held under the right circumstances in a way that could actually advance the relationship,” Sullivan said.

Tags Alexei, Consequences, Dies, Face, House, Navalny, Russia, warns, White

World News

Russia, Putin and Alexei Navalny: What occurs subsequent?

Post author By
Post date February 4, 2021

Russia, Putin and Alexei Navalny: What happens next?

Riot police during an unauthorized rally in support of Alexei Navalny in central Moscow on February 2, 2021.

Mikhail Tereshchenko | TASS | Getty Images

The arrest of opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russia has been widely awaited by Russian observers, but experts say what comes next will likely depend on the dynamics of the protests in support of Navalny, whether the West decides to punish Russia and how the Kremlin does responded to growing unrest in the country.

Navalny, who is widely regarded as one of Putin’s most prominent critics, was sentenced to three and a half years in prison on Tuesday for breaking parole. The allegations he and his team made were fabricated and politically motivated.

The judge said the year Navalny has already spent under house arrest (around 10 months) will be deducted from his prison sentence. Navalny’s defense team has announced that it will appeal the court ruling.

Protests against Navalny’s first imprisonment in mid-January and immediately after his return from Germany to Russia, where he had been treated for nerve agent poisoning since last summer, were carried out over the last two weekends in Russia and again outside the US on Tuesday in the Moscow Court, where the Judgment was made.

The verdict was widely condemned by Western governments, but the US and Europe did not threaten further sanctions against Russia for the time being, as both demanded the immediate and unconditional release of Navalny.

US Senator Mitt Romney, R-Utah, indicated in a tweet that further sanctions could be imposed on Russia, which is already operating under Western restrictions due to the annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and, among other things, has entered the US Meddles in 2016 elections.

Timothy Ash, a leading emerging markets strategist at Bluebay Asset Management, believes more sanctions will come.

“We may not see this promotion this week, it may take weeks / months, but I think when it comes we will be surprised by its scope / scope,” Ash said via email.

“This is not a case of a step-by-step approach, but an overall picture, a common approach to countering the Russian threat. And hit Russia hard from the start – to make it clear to Putin, we know what you’re doing, we know when you get your card we know all you understand is power, and here it is. “

Ash said he expected “a rolling approach to roll back Putin’s offensive campaign against western liberal market democracies.”

More protests?

The scale and extent of the West’s reaction against Russia remains to be seen, but this could also affect the dynamism of the pro-navalny protests in Russia.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said police had the right to use harsh methods to break off protests by supporters of Navalny who had gathered outside the Moscow court where the hearing took place.

Peskov also said calls from Navalny’s allies for Russians to take to the streets after he was jailed on Tuesday were a provocation, Reuters reported. More than 1,400 supporters of Navalny in 10 cities were arrested on Tuesday, according to the OVD-Info monitoring group.

The US, Germany and France are among the Western nations that have condemned the violence against protesters in Russia and called for Navalny to be released immediately.

Russia has rejected this criticism, defended the police’s response to protests and accused Western countries of double standards.

“With regard to the events in Russia and not only in Navalny, the reporting of the West is selective and one-sided,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in a press conference on Wednesday, Tass news agency reported.

“The hysteria we heard about the Navalny trial is far exaggerated,” he added.

Daragh McDowell, Russia’s chief analyst at risk analysis firm Verisk Maplecroft, said the conviction and imprisonment of Navalny would “represent a massive blow to the opposition that has lost one of its most effective organizers and communicators.”

The movement continued to suffer as other members of the Navalny National Organization were also arrested and detained. Whether the protests can continue at their current level is unknown.

“The key question is whether the current wave of protests sparked by Navalny’s arrest has reached a point where they will support themselves and continue even if he and his team are removed from the field. The decision to imprison him , will certainly likely be hit. ” at least a short-term spike in street protests, accompanied by a corresponding increase in arrests and aggressive police brutality, “noted McDowell.

Political stalemate

Experts warn Putin of concern that the protests so far also reflect general public dissatisfaction with the Russian ruling class, widespread corruption and kleptocracy, and a decline in living standards.

McDowell said a “major cause for concern for the Kremlin should be that the protests sparked by Navalny’s arrest are more the result of longer-term social and economic stagnation … the protesters are driven less by Navalny’s political program than by them driven are a general feeling of being fed up with the status quo. “

Although there is allegedly a lack of political alternatives to Putin, whom McDowell viewed as not in immediate danger of falling, “his political regime is based less on active support than on tolerance and acceptance, and it appears that the Russian population is rapidly approaching its limits.”

Protesters hold a banner reading “FREE NAVALNY” as around 2,500 supporters of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny protest to demand his release from Moscow prison on January 23, 2021 in Berlin.

Omer Messinger | Getty Images News | Getty Images

This sentiment was confirmed by Christopher Granville, executive director of EMEA and global political research at TS Lombard, but warned of a possible “stalemate” between the Kremlin and the opposition.

“The main cause of the current political ferment in Russia is Vladimir Putin’s long reign, which is entering its final phase. Far from eliminating uncertainties (even at the expense of more acute short-term turbulence), this final is now more likely to drag on.” social tension and polarization, “he said in a note on Tuesday.

Granville said its discouraging outlook for Russia, which also negatively impacted the country’s economic growth prospects and valuations of the country’s assets, “stems from a key feature of Alexey Navalny’s challenge to Putin’s ruling establishment: stalemate.”

“The support base of either side in Russian society is too solid to allow for quick or easy victories. Removing Navalny from the board of directors, be it by murder or, as before, by imprisonment, is not a ‘solution’: far from a cult of personality being the movement he’s galvanized marks a generation change. The Putin base, still a plurality, is now cemented by rational fears of instability, “he said.

Tags Alexei, Navalny, Putin, Russia

Politics

Blinken requires Russian launch of Alexei Navalny

Post author By
Post date February 1, 2021

Blinken calls for Russian release of Alexei Navalny

Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny attends a rally marking the 5th anniversary of the murder of opposition politician Boris Nemtsov and protests against proposed changes to the country’s constitution on February 29, 2020 in Moscow, Russia.

Shamil Zhumatov | Reuters

WASHINGTON – Foreign Minister Anthony Blinken has condemned the Russian authorities’ “persistent use of tough tactics” against peaceful protesters who took to the streets across Russia on Sunday to demand the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

For the second year in a row, tens of thousands gathered across the country to draw attention to Navalny, a loud critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was arrested by authorities earlier this month.

According to a surveillance group, more than 4,500 people were arrested by the Russian authorities for participating in the protests.

“We again call on Russia to release those detained for the exercise of their human rights, including Aleksey Navalny,” Blinken wrote in a tweet.

Last year, Navalny was medically evacuated to Germany from a Russian hospital after falling ill after reports that something had been added to his tea. Russian doctors treating Navalny denied that the Kremlin critic had been poisoned, blaming his comatose condition for low blood sugar levels.

In September, the German government announced that the 44-year-old Russian dissident had been poisoned by a chemical agent on nerves and described the toxicological report as “clear evidence”. The nerve agent was in the Novichok family, which was developed by the Soviet Union.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied having played a role in Navalny’s poisoning.

Earlier this month, Navalny flew from Berlin to Russia, where he had recovered for almost half a year since being poisoned last summer. He was arrested at passport control.

The Russian authorities had issued an arrest warrant for Navalny, alleging that he had violated the three and a half year suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement.

“Mr. Navalny should be released immediately, and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be held accountable,” wrote Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, on Twitter shortly after his arrest.

Last week Blinken expressed “deep concern” about the treatment of Navalny and the general human rights situation in Russia.

“It remains to be seen how concerned and perhaps even frightened the Russian government seems to be of a man, Mr. Navalny,” Blinken told reporters during a press conference on Wednesday.

Newly confirmed Secretary of State Antony Blinken speaks to reporters during his first press conference at the State Department in Washington on January 27, 2021.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

“As the President said, we are examining all these measures, which are of great concern to us, whether they are the treatment of Mr Navalny and, in particular, the obvious use of a chemical weapon in an attempt to assassinate him. ” “Added the nation’s top diplomat.

Blinken also said Wednesday that the Biden administration is investigating the hack on SolarWinds, reports of Russia’s bounties to American forces in Afghanistan, and possible election disruptions.

Biden previously vowed to “work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes”. He had previously accused the Trump administration of not representing Moscow strictly enough.

Tags Alexei, Blinken, calls, Navalny, release, Russian

World News

Russian Court docket Orders Aleksei Navalny Saved in Jail

Post author By
Post date January 28, 2021

Russian Court Orders Aleksei Navalny Kept in Jail

“If they really wanted to, they would most likely have got it,” Putin said.

Despite the Kremlin sacking Mr Navalny and his supporters as part of As a misguided minority, the opposition leader has shown that he can attract the attention of millions of people in Russia.

Shortly after returning to Moscow, Mr Navalny’s team published an investigation describing a secret palace on the shores of the Black Sea allegedly built for Mr Putin and paid for by state-owned companies. Navalny’s ally Lyubov Sobol said the video version of the investigation was viewed by more than 100 million people on YouTube, with 70 percent viewing from Russia. On Monday, Mr Putin denied Mr Navalny’s allegations and called the video investigation “boring”.

While he was in prison, Mr. Navalny was dragged out of daily political life in his cell, said Olga Mikhailova, his lawyer. For example, he was unaware that several members of his team had been arrested and that his home had been ransacked by the police.

According to OVD-Info, an activist group tracking arrests during protests, Russian authorities arrested more than 4,000 people across the country last week in protests demanding the release of Mr Navalny. At least seven criminal cases against protesters have opened, Moscow police said in a statement, warning people not to participate in protests that have not been sanctioned.

When his supporters are under increasing pressure from the authorities and speak on the video link from prison on Thursday, Mr Navalny tries to lift their spirits.

“They are not and never will be masters of our country,” said Navalny, referring to Mr. Puting and his government. “Lots of people, tens of millions, agree with me,” he said. “And we will never allow these people to conquer and rob our country.”

Tags Aleksei, Court, Jail, Navalny, Orders, Russian

World News

Navalny Protests: Stay Updates as Russians Demand Opposition Chief’s Launch

Post author By
Post date January 23, 2021

Navalny Protests: Live Updates as Russians Demand Opposition Leader’s Release

Despite bitter cold and intimidation attempts, protests are taking place across Russia.

Thousands of people in Russia’s Far East and Siberia gathered on Saturday in support of jailed opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny in what turned out to be the largest nationwide showdown in years between Russian authorities and critics of the Kremlin.

In the eastern regions of Russia, a country with eleven time zones, protests began hours before demonstrations in Moscow were due to begin. Soon after dawn in the capital, Saturday appeared to be the biggest day of protest in the country since at least 2017 – although it was not clear whether the contradiction would succeed in persuading the Kremlin to change course.

In the cities of Vladivostok on the Pacific and Irkutsk and Novosibirsk in Siberia, recordings of well over 1,000 people showed chants like “We are responsible here!”. and “We’re not going!”

In Yakutsk, the coldest city in the world, numerous demonstrators defy temperatures of minus 60 Fahrenheit in the icy fog. In Khabarovsk, the city on the Chinese border where protests against the Kremlin took place last summer, hundreds of people returning to the streets faced overwhelming numbers of riot police.

“I have never been a great believer in Navalny, and yet I understand very well that this is a very serious situation,” said Vitaliy Blazhevich, 57, a Russian university professor, in a telephone interview about why he chose Mr. Navalny in Khabarovsk .

“There is always hope that something will change,” said Blazhevich.

Protesters demand Navalny be released from prison, but the Kremlin is holding on.

Aleksei Navalny, a 44-year-old anti-corruption activist who is the most prominent domestic critic of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was poisoned in Siberia in August with a military-grade nerve agent in what Western officials called an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

He was flown to Germany and recovered. And last Sunday after flying home to Moscow, he was arrested at passport control.

Russian authorities say Mr Navalny violated a suspended sentence he received six years ago and are trying to limit him to years in prison. After he was jailed on Monday for an initial 30-day sentence, his supporters called for protests, arguing that only street pressure could avert what they describe as an attempt by Mr Putin to get his favorite opponent out of the way to vacate.

These protests took place across Russia on Saturday, organized in part by Mr Navalny’s extensive network of local offices. Local officials did not approve the protests – citing the coronavirus pandemic, among other things – and threatened to arrest anyone who attended.

The video showed police officers fighting with protesters in Vladivostok and Khabarovsk, but there were no immediate reports of large-scale violence. OVD-Info, an activist group tracking arrests during protests, reported 174 arrests nationwide as of midday in Moscow – a number that would surely increase later in the day.

In the normally quiet town of Yuzhno-Sakhalinsk, a fisheries and energy center on an island north of Japan, hundreds of people took part in the protests on Saturday.

Some schools have postponed classes while one held a basketball tournament on Saturday to keep teenagers away from the protests, said Lyubov Barabashova, a city-based journalist.

The police did not prevent the demonstrators from gathering in front of the regional government headquarters, Ms. Barabashova said. When a police officer announced via megaphone that the rally was illegal, the demonstrators sang in response: “Putin is a thief! Freedom to Navalny! “

The Kremlin has weathered waves of protests in recent years, and there was no immediate indication that this time would be any different. There were growing signals that the Russian government intended to respond to the protests with a new wave of repression.

The US embassy in Moscow warned American citizens to stay away from the protests on Saturday – an announcement that the Channel One news anchor pointed out that the US had indeed organized them.

“This is very important: information on the location and time of the unauthorized events scheduled for tomorrow has been posted on the American embassy website,” said the Channel One host. “As they say, draw your own conclusions.”

The Russian authorities said they had opened criminal investigations against protest organizers. And on Friday, the main evening newscast on Russian state-controlled Channel One devoted about a third of the show to Mr. Navalny – a clear departure from the typical state news media practice of ignoring him.

Russia is trying to prevent young people from taking to the streets.

A ninth grader in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg asked his classmates this week why they didn’t like President Vladimir V. Putin.

According to their teacher Irina V. Skachkova, citing the imprisoned opposition leader Aleksei A. Navalny, they replied: “Putin has a palace that was built with stolen money, and Putin is a thief himself.”

Mr Navalny’s dramatic return to Russia from Germany on Sunday and his immediate arrest, followed by the release of a video documenting Putin’s alleged secret palace on the Black Sea, have captured many young Russians and prompted authorities to make an effort to keep them away from protests.

Some universities threatened to expel students if they were caught in the protests for the release of Mr Navalny, which are being organized in dozens of cities across Russia, even though local officials did not authorize them.

The Ministry of Education urged families to spend the weekend doing non-political activities such as “a walk in a park or a forest”.

Russia’s telecommunications regulator said it had ordered social networks to cut posts for Saturday’s protests and the country’s top investigative agency has opened a criminal investigation into alleged inciting minors to join.

In the days leading up to the protests on Saturday, Aleksei A. Navalny’s team published a comprehensive investigation describing a secret palace built for President Vladimir V. Putin on the Black Sea.

The report, released Tuesday, less than 24 hours after Mr Navalny was arrested, was the latest blow in the Russian opposition leader’s dramatic battle against Mr Putin.

The investigation – including floor plans, financial details, and interiors of a site that Mr Navalny said cost more than $ 1 billion – appeared to provide the most comprehensive record of any huge residence that the president allegedly kept for himself has built southern Russia’s green coast.

The Kremlin denied the findings of the report, which went online as a 113-minute YouTube video and illustrated text version, urging users to post pictures of Putin’s alleged luxury on Facebook and Instagram. The video has been viewed more than 65 million times on YouTube.

“They will steal more and more until they bankrupt the whole country,” says Navalny in the video, referring to Putin and his circle. “Russia sells huge amounts of oil, gas, metals, fertilizer and wood – but people’s incomes are falling and falling because Putin has his palace.”

Few people had heard of the nerve agent Novichok until 2018, when Western officials accused Russia of using him in the UK attempt on a former spy. It made headlines in September when Germany said the poison had made Russian dissident Aleksei A. Navalny sick.

But scientists, spies, and chemical weapons specialists have known and feared Novichok for decades. It is a powerful neurotoxin that was developed in the Soviet Union and Russia in the 1980s and 1990s and can be delivered as a liquid, powder, or aerosol. It is said to be more deadly than nerve substances better known in the West. like VX and Sarin.

The poison causes muscle spasms that can stop the heart, buildup of fluid in the lungs that can also be fatal, and can damage other organs and nerve cells. Russia has made several versions of novichok, and experts say it is unclear how many times they have been used, as the resulting deaths can seem like nothing more sinister than a heart attack.

Such could have been the case of Sergei V. Skripal, a former Russian spy who lives in Salisbury, England. When Mr Skripal was barely conscious in a park in March 2018, there was no obvious reason to suspect poisoning – other than that his daughter who was visiting him had the same symptoms.

British intelligence agencies identified the substance as novichok and accused Russia. The attack turned into a major international scandal that further shook relations between Moscow and the West. The British identified Russian agents who they said had flown to the UK, applied the poison on the door handle of Mr Skripal’s house and left the country, leaving a trail of videos and chemical evidence.

The government of President Vladimir V. Putin has consistently denied any involvement and has put forward a number of alternative theories. And just months before the Salisbury attack, Putin said Russia had destroyed all of its chemical weapons.

Ivan Nechepurenko and Richard Pérez-Peña contributed to the coverage.

Tags demand, leaders, Live, Navalny, Opposition, Protests, release, Russians, Updates

World News

Russia Seeks to Divert Youths From Lure of Navalny Protests

Post author By
Post date January 22, 2021

The seemingly sisyphic efforts of the Russian authorities to get social networks to remove pro-navalny content, however, have made it clear what is increasingly becoming a major security gap for the Kremlin: the availability of inexpensive, fast, and mostly uncensored internet access in almost all Countries populated corner of the country’s 11 time zones.

The government has tried, and for the most part failed, to contain the internet. For example, last year ended the two-year effort to block the Telegram messaging network, a ban that users could quickly bypass.

On Friday, the Russian telecommunications authority Roskomnadzor announced that YouTube, Instagram and the Russian social network VKontakte had begun canceling “calls for children to participate in illegal mass events” on the orders of the Russian attorney general.

Facebook, which owns Instagram, denied removing content.

“We have received requests from the local regulatory authority to restrict access to certain content that encourages protest,” Facebook said in a statement. “Since this content does not violate our community standards, it stays on our platform.”

The other social networks did not immediately respond to requests for comments.

The biggest problem, the regulator said, was TikTok, the Chinese-owned app that hosts seconds-long viral videos, often musically themed. Videos tagged with the hashtag #Navalny on the network had been viewed more than 800 million times by Friday.

In a clip that was “liked” more than 500,000 times, a young woman teaching pithy English gave tips on how to sound like an American – “I’ll call my lawyer!” – when arrested during the protests.

“The highest level of activity continues on the social network,” Roskomnadzor said in a statement referring to TikTok. “New appeals appear, which in some cases are artificially spread.”

Tags Divert, Lure, Navalny, Protests, Russia, seeks, Youths

Politics

Biden nationwide safety advisor requires Russia to launch Navalny

Post author By
Post date January 18, 2021

Biden national security advisor calls for Russia to release Navalny

A file photo dated September 29, 2019 shows Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny during a rally in support of political prisoners on Prospekt Sakharova Street in Moscow, Russia. Alexei Navalny is passed out in hospital after allegedly being poisoned, according to his press secretary.

Sefa Karacan | Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

WASHINGTON – President-elect Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan called for the immediate release of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was arrested at a Moscow airport on Sunday after his arrival.

The previous Sunday, Navalny flew from Berlin to Russia, where he had recovered for almost six months since being poisoned last summer. He was arrested at passport control.

Last week, Russian authorities issued an arrest warrant for Navalny alleging that he had violated the three and a half year suspended sentence he received in 2014 for embezzlement.

“Mr. Navalny should be released immediately and the perpetrators of the outrageous attack on his life must be brought to justice,” Sullivan wrote on Twitter.

The White House and State Department did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

Sullivan’s call for Navalny to be released comes days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office. Biden’s new government is expected to increase pressure on Russia.

After the poisoning of Navalny last year, Biden vowed “to work with our allies and partners to hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes,” and accused President Donald Trump of not being tough enough.

A non-partisan group of US senators had urged the Trump administration to impose sanctions on Russia in response to the poisoning of Navalny. Trump, who is leaving office on Wednesday, did not do so.

The United Kingdom and the European Union, close allies of the United States, swiftly imposed targeted sanctions on six Russians and a government research center in October.

On the return flight to Moscow, Navalny told reporters that he was feeling great and that the trip home was “the best moment in five months.”

“I feel great. I’m finally going back to my hometown,” he said, according to a Reuters report.

Following the test results, the White House said it was “deeply concerned” by the matter and called the poisoning “utterly reprehensible.”

“The United States is deeply concerned about the results released today,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Ullyot said in a written statement at the time. “The poisoning of Alexei Navalny is completely reprehensible. Russia has used the chemical nerve agent novichok in the past,” he said, referring to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in England in 2018.

The Kremlin has repeatedly denied a role in the poisoning of Navalny and Skripal.

Navalny’s arrest Sunday faces another strain on relations between European leaders and Russian President Vladimir Putin and comes while the Kremlin works to secure a gas pipeline project, Nord Stream 2, to Germany.

Tags advisor, Biden, calls, national, Navalny, release, Russia, Security

World News

Navalny Arrested on Return to Moscow in Battle of Wills With Putin

Post author By
Post date January 18, 2021

MOSCOW – Aleksei A. Navalny returned to his home country on Sunday, five months after a near-fatal nerve agent attack and was arrested at the border. This is a sign of the fearlessness of Russia’s most prominent opposition leader and the concern of President Vladimir V. Putin.

In hours of live streaming drama that took place in Berlin, in the air and at two Moscow airports, Mr Navalny fell headlong into near-safe custody after deciding to leave the relative security of Germany, where he fell from the last Summer had recovered from poisoning.

Hundreds of people brave the bitter cold outside Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport to greet Mr Navalny, but the cheap Russian airline he was flying was diverted to another Moscow airport just before landing. There, Mr. Navalny was confronted with uniformed police officers in black masks during passport control.

He hugged his wife Yulia Navalnaya before being led away.

“I’m not afraid,” Navalny told reporters shortly before his arrest, standing in front of a neon sign at the airport depicting the Kremlin. “I know that I am right and that all criminal proceedings against me are fabricated.”

The arrest of Mr Navalny had been expected, but the day presented some of the most dramatic images of the past few years, underscoring both Russia’s growing domestic dissatisfaction and the Kremlin’s unrest over it.

Countless riot police in camouflage uniforms and shiny black helmets swarmed the arrival halls of Vnukovo and detained dozens. Other officials, some in plain clothes, came across some of Mr. Navalny’s finest employees while they were dining at an airport cafe and leading them away.

Russia’s independent media offered uninterrupted live coverage, which was freely available on Russia’s mostly uncensored Internet, from the moment German police officers escorted Mr. Navalny onto the asphalt in Berlin. Dozhd, an online television station, reported that its live feed was viewed six million times on Sunday night.

Always aware of the social media look at home, Mr Navalny responded in Russian to questions he was asked in English when he boarded the plane in Berlin. Shortly before the start, he published a video on Instagram in which his wife delivered a line from a popular Russian crime thriller: “Bring us vodka, boy. We’re going home. “

His style – tough, populist and humorous at the same time – contributed to the 44-year-old Navalny becoming Russia’s most famous opposition leader. An online audience of millions watches his YouTube videos showing corruption rife among the ruling elite.

But his followers aren’t the only ones watching.

In August, Mr. Navalny was poisoned in Siberia by a military grade nerve agent. He and Western officials said it was an assassination attempt by the Russian state.

In December, after an investigation by the Bellingcat research group, Mr Navalny pretended to be a Russian officer and called a security agent who was part of the unit that tried to kill him and extracted what sounded like a confession.

However, last Wednesday, Mr Navalny said he was coming home despite the threat of arrest. “Russia is my country,” he said. “Moscow is my city. And I miss her. “

The question now is whether Mr Navalny will only be detained for a few days or weeks – as has happened to him repeatedly in recent years – or for much longer.

Shortly after his arrest on Sunday evening, the Russian State Prison Service announced that Mr. Navalny would remain behind bars pending a trial for violating the terms of a suspended sentence he originally received in 2014. The sentence arose from a financial crime case brought against him and his brother, which the European Court of Human Rights later found unjustified.

According to the prison service, Mr Navalny did not report twice a month during his recovery in Germany last year, as requested by the court. In the days leading up to his return home, the service warned that he would be arrested for these reasons.

Mr Navalny’s fate may depend in part on the intensity of the backlash to his arrest at home and abroad. In Russia, his supporters called for protests in the coming days and found that his lawyer had not been given access to the opposition leader.

“Aleksei Navalny was kidnapped, he is in danger,” a senior adviser to Mr. Navalny, Leonid Volkov, posted on the telegram a few hours after his arrest. “He’s in the hands of people who have tried to kill him.”

In the United States, Jake Sullivan, national security adviser-designate to President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr., posted a Twitter request for the immediate release of Mr. Navalny: “The Kremlin’s attacks on Mr. Navalny are not just a violation of human rights, but an affront to the Russian people who want their voices to be heard. “

Outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also condemned the arrest. “Aleksei Navalny is not the problem,” he said in a statement. “We demand his immediate and unconditional release.”

Mr Putin, who has ruled for 21 years, retains tight control over television waves, domestic politics and an extensive security apparatus. But its popularity with the Russian public has waned in recent years amid stagnant incomes and widespread aversion to official corruption.

Mr Navalny has taken advantage of the discontent, built a nationwide network of local offices, and used social media to highlight the hidden wealth of the elite and the struggles of regular Russians.

Vladimir Murzin, a 50-year-old legal advisor, was among the supporters who wanted to greet him at Vnukovo Airport on Sunday. Mr Murzin said he and several others had come from Tambov – a 300 mile drive – to be there. The poisoning of the opposition leader only intensified his “years of anger over the injustice of what is happening in our country under the Putin regime”.

“This is a man the masses will follow,” said Mr Murzin of Mr Navalny. “Any citizen who does not agree with the current regime needs mutual support.”

But Mr Navalny’s flight on the Russian state airline Pobeda – which means “victory” – never made it to Vnukovo.

As the Boeing 737 approached Moscow, air traffic controllers radioed the flight’s pilots and said the plane could not land because of a blocked runway. The flight – and three others – was diverted to another Moscow airport, Sheremetyevo.

An official statement later blamed a stuck snowplow for the diversions. But it seemed like a transparent ploy by the Russian authorities to defuse the protests of the Navalny supporters gathered in Vnukovo.

“This shows once again what is happening in Russia,” said Navalny after his flight was rerouted and apologized to his fellow passengers for the inconvenience. “The rulers are not only disgusting thieves, but also totally pathetic people who spend their time with utter nonsense.”

The scale of the operation to cope with the opposition leader’s return contradicted Putin’s insistence that Mr Navalny is of minor importance. In December, Putin denied that the state had anything to do with the poisoning of Mr. Navalny, saying, “Who needs him?”

Mr Navalny – who was banned from running for the presidency in 2018 – has warned Russians to use elections to lose Putin’s power by voting for the best-positioned opposition candidate, even though the votes are not free and fair. The next test of this strategy will take place in September, when national parliamentary elections are scheduled.

Last year, Putin gave himself the opportunity to rule until 2036 by making constitutional changes that allowed him to run for two more terms. At the Moscow airports where the drama took place on Sunday, some of his opponents admitted that achieving political change in their country seemed increasingly to be a long, dangerous and potentially bloody road.

“It will be necessary to sacrifice many lives,” said Svetlana A. Utkina, a 52-year-old Russian teacher and supporter of Navalny, in an interview in Sheremetyevo shortly after the opposition leader was arrested there.

“I’m a pessimist and an idealist,” she said. “Because if you keep squeezing people for a long time, people’s fear will eventually be suppressed.”

Mr. Navalny’s wife was not arrested, and the arrival hall burst into chants of “Yu-li-a!” when she got out of customs without her husband.

A crush of journalists followed her into the Moscow night outside the airport. Shortly before getting into a car, she said, according to video footage from the scene, “The most important thing Aleksei said today is that he is not afraid. I am also not afraid and I urge you all not to be afraid. “

Oleg Matsnev and Sophia Kishkovsky contributed to the research.

Tags Arrested, Battle, Moscow, Navalny, Putin, return, Wills