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Protesters and officers of the special police in Moscow
Photo: KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP
Lyubov Sobol sits in the taxi and looks out through the steamed-up windows at her hometown Moscow.
You can see police officers, personnel carriers, demonstrators on the way to Pushkin Square.
It is shortly before two o'clock, officially the protest rally against the arrest of Alexej Navalny is supposed to take place, and for the opposition politician and Navalny supporter Sobol: she will be arrested as soon as she leaves the car and is recognized.
She didn't spend the night at home, but somewhere else. Now she gives quick interviews in the taxi and speaks live on the independent television channel Doschd.
Then she pulls back her hood and steps among the demonstrators.
There is applause.
She says: “Don't be afraid!” Hugs a crying woman who wants to thank her.
It only takes minutes, then police officers pounce on her and pull her away.
On Saturday, Russia is witnessing a wave of solidarity demonstrations for Alexej Navalny, the Putin opponent who was poisoned last year, then treated in Germany and imprisoned immediately after his return to Russia.
The wave began on the Pacific coast and then rolled through the country's time zones to the capital.
By the time she got there in the afternoon, it had long been clear: the protests this Saturday were much bigger than many had expected.
Tens of thousands gathered in more than 80 cities across the country.
Most of the people came to Moscow.
Whether there were actually 40,000 demonstrators, as reported by the Reuters news agency, was difficult to assess.
Many had not even made it to the locked Pushkin Square, stood along Tverskaya Street, on the opposite boulevard and in the side streets.
According to local journalists, more than 10,000 protesters came to St Petersburg, Putin's birthplace.
Protests at minus 50 degrees
The news portal Meduza reported that never before have so many people demonstrated beyond the two largest cities in Russia: According to information from local media, there were around 3,000 participants in Vladivostok in the Far East;
in Novosibirsk around 4,000 people were counted, in Omsk around 2,000 participants, both cities are in Siberia.
The plane carrying Navalny made an emergency landing in Omsk last year after collapsing from being poisoned.
Even in Yakutsk, when it was minus 50 degrees, dozens of people gathered.
Navalny has called for the biggest protests in Russia for years.
The last time tens of thousands took to the streets in 2017, when the opposition and his team published a film about property and wineries, which they assigned to then Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev.
Now, three years later, the situation in the country has deteriorated further and the climate has gradually become more repressive.
Putin has put countless laws into force since 2017, which also impose even stricter sanctions on people gathering on the streets.
In any case, rallies by the opposition have rarely been approved in the past.
For days the authorities had warned against participating in the unauthorized protests;
Kremlin spokesman Dimitrij Peskow spoke of provocateurs, a vice minister of the interior of attempts to "destabilize the country" - a choice of words that has often been heard in recent months from the Belarusian regime in the neighboring country in view of the protests there.
Nevertheless, so many people dared to take to the streets in Russia on Saturday.
"By no means everyone who wants to protest, those who are ready to take the risk have come," said political scientist Abbas Galliamov.
The dissatisfaction is much greater - and that before the parliamentary elections in autumn.
Protest with the toilet brush
In Moscow, it was mainly younger people who came to the center of the city, significantly more men than women.
Some of them said they were demonstrating for the first time - not necessarily because they were for Navalny, as they emphasized, but because they did not agree that he was poisoned and imprisoned.
Accompanied by car drivers honking their horns to show their solidarity, protesters shouted "Putin is a thief" and "Freedom", demanding that Navalny be released.
Some had toilet brushes with them - as an allusion to the opposition member's new reveal film, in which he reports on a luxury property on the Black Sea that he attributes to Putin himself.
The video, which has now been viewed 66 million times, also showed the villa's magnificent interior, including the $ 700 toilet brushes.
The group that was most talked about beforehand was largely absent: the minors.
On the TikTok platform, young people had posted so many solidarity videos that the authorities warned against participating in schools and even summoned students.
Again and again there was violence in Moscow, the officers of the Omon special police took rigorous action against the protesters, and journalists were also arrested.
Employees of the station Dodschd, who showed live pictures of Pushkin Square, which was filled with demonstrators, from an adjacent apartment, were taken away - apparently the authorities wanted to prevent such recordings.
Even before the protests began, officials began dragging people across the square and dragging them away.
The security forces later pushed protesters from the square and then again beat them with batons.
TV images from independent broadcasters showed demonstrators throwing snowballs at officials, and one man kicked a police officer.
The security authorities reported several officers injured, but how many of the protesters were injured is unknown.
In Moscow, groups of demonstrators marched through the city until evening.
More than 1,600 people across the country were arrested by 6 p.m. Moscow time, including Navalny's wife Julija.
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Collaboration: Alexander Chernyshev
