Alexei Navalny demise: Over 400 detained in Russia as nation pays tribute to Putin’s fiercest foe |

NEW DELHI: Over 400 people had been detained in Russia whereas paying their respects to opposition chief Alexei Navalny, who handed away at a distant Arctic penal colony, in accordance with a famend rights group.
Navalny’s sudden demise on the age of 47 got here as a devastating blow to many Russians who had positioned their hopes for the long run on President Vladimir Putin’s strongest adversary.Regardless of surviving a nerve agent poisoning and enduring a number of jail sentences, Navalny remained vocal in his relentless criticism of the Kremlin.
The information of his demise reverberated worldwide, prompting a whole bunch of individuals in numerous Russian cities to collect at impromptu memorials and monuments devoted to victims of political repression, leaving flowers and candles in tribute to the politician.
By Saturday evening, the OVD-Data rights group, which displays political arrests and affords authorized help, reported that 401 people had been detained in over a dozen cities. The most important variety of arrests, exceeding 200, occurred in St Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest metropolis.
Grigory Mikhnov-Voitenko, a priest from the Apostolic Orthodox Church, an unbiased non secular group separate from the Russian Orthodox Church, was amongst these detained. He had introduced plans on social media to carry a memorial service for Navalny and was arrested outdoors his house on Saturday morning.
Mikhnov-Voitenko was charged with organizing a rally and was initially held in a police precinct earlier than being hospitalized with a stroke, in accordance with OVD-Data. In St Petersburg, 42 of the people detained on Friday had been sentenced by courts to serve jail phrases starting from one to 6 days, whereas 9 others had been fined.
In Moscow, a minimum of six folks had been ordered to serve 15-day jail sentences, as reported by OVD-Data. Moreover, one particular person was imprisoned within the southern metropolis of Krasnodar and two extra in Bryansk, in accordance with the rights group.
The information of Navalny’s demise comes only a month earlier than Russia’s presidential election, which is extensively anticipated to grant President Vladimir Putin one other six years in energy.
Questions concerning the reason for Navalny’s demise persist, and it stays unsure when the authorities will launch his physique to his household. Navalny’s group declared on Saturday that the politician had been “murdered” and accused the authorities of deliberately delaying the discharge of his physique.
Navalny’s mom and legal professionals encountered conflicting info from numerous establishments they approached of their try to retrieve the physique. “They’re main us in circles and overlaying their tracks,” mentioned Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Yarmysh, on Saturday.
Navalny’s closest ally and strategist, Leonid Volkov, said on Sunday, “The whole lot within the colony is below surveillance. Each step he took was recorded from all angles through the years. Every worker had a video recorder. In two days, not a single video has been leaked or revealed. There isn’t a room for uncertainty right here.”
Based on Yarmysh, a observe given to Navalny’s mom said that he died at 2:17 pm on Friday. When she arrived on the penal colony on Saturday, jail officers knowledgeable her that her son had succumbed to “sudden demise syndrome,” as conveyed by Ivan Zhdanov, the director of Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Basis.
The Federal Penitentiary Service of Russia reported that Navalny fell unwell and misplaced consciousness after a stroll on Friday on the penal colony within the city of Kharp, positioned 1,900 km (1,200 miles) northeast of Moscow. Though an ambulance arrived, Navalny couldn’t be revived. The reason for demise continues to be below investigation, in accordance with the service.
Navalny had been in custody since January 2021, having returned to Moscow after recovering from a nerve agent poisoning that he attributed to the Kremlin. Since his arrest, he has obtained three jail sentences on costs he has vehemently denied as politically motivated.
Following the latest verdict, which sentenced him to 19 years, Navalny remarked that he understood he was “serving a life sentence, which is measured by the size of my life or the size of this regime.”
Shortly after information of Navalny’s demise broke, his spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, made a dramatic look on the Munich Safety Convention. She expressed uncertainty in regards to the info offered by official Russian sources however warned that if the information was true, Putin and his associates could be held accountable for what that they had achieved to the nation, her household, and her husband.

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