Kremlin represses Navalni freedom protests with hundreds of arrests across Russia

In the frozen Yakutsk, in the Russian Far East, with temperatures of minus 50 degrees Celsius, in the Siberian Tomsk, in Moscow, where the closed streets prevented reaching the city center.

Tens of thousands of people took to the streets in 60 Russian cities this Saturday in support of Alexei Navalni.

In one of the largest protests in years, protesters have demanded the release of the opponent, arrested just after returning to Russia from Germany, where he recovered from the poison attack he suffered in August in Siberia.

The authorities, who had warned that the marches were prohibited, have detained more than 1,600 people.

Neither the cold nor the arrest these days of Navalni's main collaborators, nor the threats from the authorities have deterred the protests.

Marina, Sasha and Svetlana say that they are "tired" of the political and social repression in Russia.

Fed up with high-level corruption.

This Saturday is his first demonstration.

They are not supporters of Navalni, but they explain that they could no longer sit idly by.

"It is a matter of principle, what is happening in Russia is scary", highlights Sasha, 33 years old.

Like her friends, she prefers not to give her last name for fear of retaliation in her work as an architect.

“They arrest everyone who stands up to Putin, they poison.

What will be next ”, he wonders at the Moscow march.

A few meters away, the police also took Yulia Naválnaya, the wife of the opponent, who is serving 30 days in provisional prison pending an upcoming court hearing that could sentence him to several years in prison.

The opponent is accused of violating the terms of a six-year sentence that had imposed him a suspended prison sentence and probation for failing to go to the corresponding reviews while he was in Germany, recovering from the attack with a neurotoxin for military use created in the former USSR.

Independent media estimate that some 110,000 people have participated in the demonstrations in different parts of Russia.

Despite the repression and being completely invisible in the state media, Navalni has woven a support network in the Russian provinces over the years.

His open, close and somewhat populist style and his visibility on social networks has also generated support among young people, especially in their twenties and thirties.

And increasingly among adolescents, with whom he connects with videos about the corruption of the Russian political and economic elite.

This Saturday, at the Moscow march, young people were the majority.

"Freedom!", Have chanted tens of thousands of people in the center of Moscow, encouraged by the drivers of the cars that as they passed the river of protesters honked their horns.

"Putin, thief," they shouted, trying to cover the sound of the loudspeakers of the police cars, which broadcast non-stop warnings about the illegality of the marches.

Amid the tide of people in Moscow, many cheered a group of girls proudly waving white toilet brushes.

"They cost 1,000 euros, like those in Putin's palace," joked one.

On Tuesday, with the opponent already in prison, his team published a powerful video about the supposed palace of Vladimir Putin, financed with fraudulent funds and as large as 39 times Monaco, with an ice rink, a church and even a pole dance hall.

The investigation into that mansion on the Black Sea has sparked further mobilization.