RTMon, 27 Mar 2017 14:43 UTC
© Evgeny Odinkov / SputnikThe Russian opposition activist Aleksey Navalny
A Russian court has sentenced Russian opposition activist Aleksey Navalny to 15 days in jail for resisting arrest during an unsanctioned rally on Sunday. Earlier, he was found guilty of staging the protest, for which he will be fined 20,000 rubles ($350).Aleksey Navalny was detained shortly after arriving at an unsanctioned anti-corruption protest in downtown Moscow on Sunday. He was charged with violating a law on public gatherings and faced a fine, community service, or administrative detention. He was also charged for resisting arrest during the same rally.
Navalny's defense will appeal both the administrative charge and the $350 fine, the activist's lawyer Olga Mikhaylova told journalists.
Moscow police have officially confirmed that they detained some 500 demonstrators.
Some 8,000 people took part in the protest in Russia's capital, law enforcement officials reported. As the rally continued, police used loudspeakers to call on the protesters to disperse.Protesters turned up despite failing to obtain a permit from the mayor's office to hold a rally at the site of their choosing. The authorities had suggested two alternative venues, which the organizers rejected. Moscow police said that taking part in the unsanctioned rally could pose a safety risk and advised people against it.
Similar rallies, some unsanctioned and others permitted by local authorities, were attended by thousands of people across Russia on Sunday.
"Those who claimed on the previous day in pseudoacademic language that the event was lawful and in no way violated the law - they were telling blatant lies," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Monday, referring to the organizers of the event.
The Russian Investigative Committee said on Monday that it has evidence that the organizers of an unsanctioned rally in Moscow offered monetary incentives for taking part, while particularly targeting underage participants.
Comment: Further reading:
Protests across Moscow & Russia are 'just a political show'
It is in fact highly doubtful that Navalny genuinely believes that he can win the Presidential election next year, or that he seriously aims to. However he has to show to his supporters and funders - both those in Russia, and more importantly, those in the West - that he is an active force in Russian politics and that he is providing some value for all the backing they are giving him. That leads him to make wild allegations against people like Medvedev, to announce a bid to stand in an election he cannot win, and to call a protest in Moscow and across Russia which on any objection assessment simply highlights the absence of widespread support for him.
It is this need to retain attention which explains why Navalny not only called the protest today but insisted on holding it in the form of an unsanctioned march along Tverskaya in central Moscow rather than in the various locations offered him. Through this act of seeming 'defiance' Navalny is able to strike a heroic (though fake) pose (since he knows nothing will actually be done to him), provoke conflict - including his own arrest - and disguise the fact that only a few thousand people turned up to support him (the police in Moscow put the number between 7,000 to 8,000) by mixing his supporters up with ordinary pedestrian traffic and the large number of onlookers who might normally be expected on a Sunday in what is Moscow's main and busiest thoroughfare.
Comment: Further reading: Protests across Moscow & Russia are 'just a political show'