More than 4,500 arrested in a new wave of protests in Russia for the release of Navalni

Neither the unprecedented police deployment in recent Russian history nor the threats from the authorities have managed to contain a new wave of demonstrations in support of Alexei Navalni.

Tens of thousands of people have demonstrated this Sunday in more than a hundred cities in Russia for the second consecutive weekend.

In a new challenge against the Kremlin, they have demanded the release of the prominent Russian opponent, in preventive detention and pending a trial that can lead to a long sentence in a penal colony.

The Administration, which harshly repressed the marches, responded with a colossal show of force: a siege to the center in the main cities, the closure of subway stations and a large presence of police and riot police, armed with helmets, shields and batons.

There are more than 4,500 detainees throughout the country, according to the count of the specialized organization Ovd-Info.

Alexéi Navalni had called on his followers this week to keep up the pressure and keep going out on the streets.

His main collaborators are under house arrest and held incommunicado.

This Sunday, the protests were somewhat smaller than those of last weekend, which resulted in more than 4,600 arrested and were considered the largest in the last decade;

but, above all, those of this Sunday have been much more dispersed and difficult to measure.

The Russian government, which has described the protests for the freedom of Navalni as illegal and has assured that they are promoted from abroad, has threatened their participants with prison terms.

This Sunday, in another bid to try to turn them off, the telecommunications regulator has threatened to fines and block the media and social networks that publish "inflated figures" of the demonstrations.

In Moscow, which has dawned with the central almond closed, a dozen sealed subway stations and several altered bus lines, Roman Matveev and his girlfriend, Ksenia, were trying to reach the meeting point, hours before the call, the famous Lubyanka square.

There is the headquarters of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB, heir to the KGB), which, according to a journalistic investigation, is behind the Navalni poisoning last August in Siberia;

an attack with a neurotoxin for military use manufactured in the former USSR that left him in a coma.

It was almost impossible to get close to the rally site.

“The repression we are facing is incomprehensible.

They no longer even bother to pretend that we actually live in an autocracy, ”said Matveev, a 38-year-old biologist.

“They have to get the message: we have had enough.

We will continue to protest ”, pointed out Ksenia, a 36-year-old doctor.

The members of the Navalni team who are still free, or outside the country, have called a new mobilization for Tuesday, when the judicial hearing of the opponent is scheduled, arrested on January 17 when he returned to Russia from Berlin, accused of raping the terms of probation while in Germany, where he was transferred into a coma from the poisoning and received hospital treatment.

The one this Sunday and the mobilizations of the week will put to the test the resistance of the protest movement, which unites the indignation of the

with the anger and discontent of a citizenry fed up with the economic crisis, corruption and inequality.

Protesters and police have played cat and mouse all day.

Trying to avoid the huge columns of riot control and police fences, the citizenship has reorganized itself with alternative calls through social networks.

And they have managed to break the siege and approach the Matrosskaya Tishina prison, where the opponent has been detained since January 18.

There, thousands of people have gathered in defiance of the security forces.

With shouts like "Freedom for Navalni", "Putin, thief" or "Moscow, go out to the street", they have walked along the snow-covered sidewalks trying to avoid the riot control vans that seemed to take people at random.

As they passed, many cars honked their horns to cheer them on.

In Moscow alone, the police have arrested more than 1,400 people - including Yulia Naválnaya, the opposition's wife, who was transferred to a suburban police station - a figure that stands in stark contrast to the 2,000 people that the authorities say have participated in protests in the capital.

In Saint Petersburg, where the demonstrations have also been very numerous, the police have been used extensively and have reduced several peaceful protesters with tear gas and electric pistols.

In Kazan, riot police have forced a group of people to lie on the snow, immobilized, awaiting arrest.

In the Far Eastern port city of Vladivostok, where the demonstration was smaller than last week, police have cornered protesters into the frozen Amur Bay.

In Siberian Krasnoyarsk, riot police have used snow to block the passage of protesters, in a kind of makeshift barricades.

Despite that and the temperatures of almost 30 degrees below zero in some points, hundreds of people have marched this Sunday.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose popularity is at an all-time low (60%, according to the latest figures from the Levada center, incomparable by Western standards), hopes to suppress this new wave of discontent as he has done on other occasions: with a heavy hand .

The Kremlin, concerned about the legislative elections next September, had already prepared itself with an extensive package of new laws that toughen the penalties for illegal protests and make it even more difficult to demonstrate and run for elections.