Authorities grip Navalni's allies with arrest warrants that keep them off the streets and off the Internet

Oleg Navalni, brother of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalni, in a Moscow court on Friday.Tverskoy District Court of Mosco / Reuters

The Russian authorities try to suppress the message of the opposition leader Alexei Navalni, driving his allies away from the streets and the Internet.

Just over a day after the next round of protests called in support of the Russian leader, currently in preventive detention, a court has issued house arrest warrants for the brother of the opponent, Oleg Navalni;

for his

number two

, Liubov Sobol, and other of his main collaborators.

All are accused of violating epidemiological regulations due to the coronavirus pandemic in the mass demonstration that was held last Saturday.

They will not be able to leave home or use communications, including the Internet, until March 23.

And they will only be able to speak to the family members they live with, their lawyer and the investigators of the case.

Oleg Navalni, Sobol, Anastasia Vasilieva (head of the Alianza de Doctores union and an opposition doctor), and María Aliojina, a member of the

punk

group

Pussy Riot, were arrested on Wednesday night in a wave of searches and arrests and transferred to a center of preventive detention.

This Friday, a Moscow court has agreed to restrictive measures for them for almost two months.

A ruling that further increases the pressure on the close circle of the prominent opponent and that comes a day after the call for new demonstrations by Navalni, who was arrested just after returning to Moscow from Germany, where he recovered from the poisoning that almost it costs him his life.

A new protest march is planned this Sunday in more than a hundred Russian cities and, to prevent them from matching the protests of last Saturday, when tens of thousands of people participated in 110 cities and that ended with more than 4,000 detainees, the authorities They are mobilizing to encircle Navalni's allies.

With the opponent in jail, with them who fundamentally keep the mobilizations alive, prohibited by the authorities.

Moscow has lifted a series of restrictions related to the pandemic this week.

Bars, clubs and restaurants have been able to reopen at night and a percentage of teleworking in offices has been removed after alleging that infections have decreased.

However, mass gatherings are still prohibited.

Accused of violating the terms of his probation by a 2014 sentence, Navalni, who attributes the order of his poisoning to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is in preventive detention until the next trial, where he will be held. plays a sentence of more than three years in prison in a penal colony.

Neither the criticism from the West for the arrest of the prominent opponent and the repression of the protests, nor the upcoming visit of the High Representative of the European Union, Josep Borrell, scheduled for next week, have deterred the Kremlin from its heavy-handed policy.

This Friday, in another move to avoid the visibility of the demonstrations in support of Navalni, the Russian Attorney General's Office has ordered the state telecommunications regulator, Roskomnadzor, to block Internet calls to join the protests.

The Russian authorities have spent days trying to get Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and Russian social networks to censor messages about the demonstrations, arguing that they lack authorization and that they induce minors to participate in them.

In a new attempt to prevent the public - which adds the outrage of the

Navalni case

to social discontent over the economic situation and inequality in the country - from taking to the streets, the Russian Interior Ministry has warned that participants in demonstrations may face charges penalties that could cost them up to eight years in prison.

The authorities opened more than a dozen criminal cases on alleged disturbances, traffic blocking and other offenses committed during last Saturday's protests, the most massive in the last decade.

In cities such as Moscow, where video surveillance systems are largely equipped with a state-of-the-art facial recognition system, the authorities have assured that they are already studying filmed material - also that disclosed in the media and social networks - to identify the alleged violators.

Meanwhile, the Kremlin tries to neutralize the outrage sparked by Navalni's investigation into the supposed millionaire palace of the Russian president on the Black Sea.

The main public television channel, which until recently acted as if the opponent were invisible like the Kremlin, has broadcast a report on the alleged mansion.

The report tries to deny that the luxurious estate belonged to Putin and alleged that it is a hotel.

The video on the supposed Putin palace, which has shaken Russia, has already accumulated 100 million views.