In protests at various locations in Russia by supporters of Alexei Navalny almost 2,000 people were arrested on Saturday, news agency writes Reuters. According to the monitoring group OVD-Info, more than two thousand people have been arrested throughout Russia. Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s wife, was also detained but has since been released.
Supporters of the arrested Russian opposition leader demand his immediate release. Ally Leonid Volkov, who was also arrested on Saturday, says that protests will be organized again next weekend.
Several countries have condemned the arrests of protesters. The British Foreign Office said in a statement that it was “very concerned” and called for the release of detainees. The ministries of Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia endorsed that statement. The three countries also demand that sanctions be imposed on Russia.
The detention of Navalny is on the agenda of the EU foreign ministers on Monday, but no decisions are expected there.
Forty officers slightly injured, unclear how many protesters
Correspondents from Reuters reported that tens of thousands of persons demonstrated in Moscow against the capture of Navalny. Russian authorities estimate that the protesters were 4,000. Forty officers were said to have been slightly injured. It is not clear how many protesters were injured.
In the Netherlands, about 150 people demonstrated at the Russian embassy in The Hague. Dozens of people also gathered on Museumplein in Amsterdam with signs that read ‘liberated Navalny’.
The Russian opposition leader was sentenced to 30 days in prison on Monday for allegedly violating terms of a previous sentence. He had just returned from Germany, where he was recovering from poisoning in Russia. The Russian secret service FSB is accused of being behind the poisoning.
The opposition leader published a video entitled earlier this week A palace for Putin, in which he claimed to have evidence that the president had built for himself a huge bribe-funded mansion on the Black Sea. The almost two-hour film already had more than 65 million views on YouTube after a few days. The Kremlin calls the charges “nonsense” and “lies.”
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