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Vigil of Navalny supporters in Moscow
Photo: Alexander Zemlianichenko / dpa
They were announced as flashlight protests: people all over Russia expressed their solidarity with the imprisoned Kremlin opponent Alexej Navalny with many short walks with lights.
Photos from Moscow and Saint Petersburg showed people with mobile phone flashlights in hand, walking in small groups through the city center or simply standing in their backyards.
Almost everywhere you can see, in keeping with Valentine's Day: hearts.
In many places people put outlines of hearts in the snow with tealights, held up posters painted with hearts or simply shaped them with their hands.
"Love is stronger than fear," was the motto of the peaceful protest, which the organizers had deliberately planned on a decentralized basis after thousands of arrests at the mass rallies of the past few weeks.
Icon: enlarge Photo: Yevgeny Sofiychuk / imago images / ITAR-TASS
Only a few civil rights activists reported arrests.
Unlike the big protests at the end of January, the flashlight campaigns were not officially banned beforehand.
Nevertheless, Nawalny's employees reported searches in several offices in the days before and suspected a connection.
In Moscow and St. Petersburg, several hundred feminists had already formed human chains that afternoon to express their solidarity with Navalny's wife Julija, who is now expected to be separated from her husband for years.
She left for Germany on Wednesday.
The protest action was also dedicated to all other political prisoners.
Navalny himself sent his wife a Valentine's Day greeting on Instagram.
"I love you," was there under a picture that shows the two of them together.
Julija Navalnaya reacted promptly and posted a photo in which she and Alexej were sitting on a bench at a distance from each other and holding out their hands one after the other.
"I'm not sad, I know that everything will be fine," she wrote.
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Silent protest with flashlights: a different kind of flash mob
Photo: OLGA MALTSEVA / AFP
Navalny was sentenced to serving three and a half years in a prison camp less than two weeks ago.
He is said to have violated probation requirements in an earlier criminal case while he was recovering from the attack with the neurotoxin Novitschok in Germany.
Statements by President Vladimir Putin also became known on Sunday.
In connection with the expressions of solidarity with Navalny, he spoke of an attempt by Russia's opponents to take advantage of popular discontent.
“They're using that extra now, of all times.
Exactly when people in all countries of the world - including us - are feeling tired, pent-up anger, dissatisfaction, "Putin said at a meeting with media representatives that took place last week and from which state television now showed excerpts.
Opponents or potential opponents have always "relied on very ambitious, power-hungry people and always used them," Putin said.
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fdi / dpa