Hundreds of Navalny Mourners Detained Across Russia
Hundreds of Navalny Mourners Detained Across Russia
At least 359 people have been detained across Russia since Aleksei Navalny’s death, a rights group reported. Those who came to lay flowers found solace in the company of others.
Without paywalls: https://archive.ph/keKRu
Russian supression out in full force and full view.
If you are russian and you see this: This is the future for you and your children. Everyone who has a different opinion and has the guts to show or tell others about it will be declared the enemy.
This is your country. Take it back!
Back? When was it people’s country?
If it were not the country of the people, putin and every other autocrat would not bother bending back over to supress the voice of people. It is his biggest fear that the people recognize their power and stand up. Many reports described how putin reacted visually shocked while seeing the pictures of Muammar Gaddafis body getting dragged through the streets during the revolution in Libya. He knows that he is on a constant edge of being toppled as a dictator and that the hounds are waiting behind the door.
Putin does in Ukraine what he does to his own people: Show endurance to imitate strength. Protest in Russia are cleared out after two days max. And that is a weak optic for the protests. Imagine people would come out with aggressive force and would show durability and destruction for days no matter how hard he tries to crack down and no matter how many people getting killed. The whole thing would slip away. We can not stop and give up in Ukraine, as that is what putin wants and how the citizens of russia are kept in check: double down.
I can imagine a world from 1917, where the russian people get back an idea of hope and their ability to take back control. A world, where they throw molotov cocktails at the Kremlin, do not bow down when they see their brothers blood in the streets and dragging putins useless corpse over the red square. That would be a horror-show for every authoritarian leader in the world. It's possible, but russians (of course) are hesitant to fight for a country, that they themself see no future in as it was talked out of them over and over and over... Who would fight for a country when your hope and dreams were systematically eradicated for decades until nothing is left other then submission.
But still, it is their country. Their (in)action controls the outcome of their country. What was won letting the blood of 400.000+ run down the Dnieper in Ukraine, when the same blood could have run down the Moskva River at home, while the later would be a total change for every russian, their children and grandchildren: 400K men die for nothing vs. 400K die at home for something.
Russian "free election"
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And the people who laid bouquets at the Wall of Grief, a monument to the victims of political persecution during the Stalin era, shared the conviction that the Russian state was behind Mr. Navalny’s death.
“What about smart voting?” ventured Andrei, referring to a system pioneered in 2018 by Mr. Navalny’s team that encouraged voters to unite around one opposition candidate, hoping to outpoll Putin loyalists.
Protests are effectively banned in Russia, and the arrests the past two days show the extent to which the authorities are ready to go to suppress public displays of anger or mourning.
On Friday, videos began circulating of men with their faces covered, removing flowers from the Solovetsky Stone, in what was interpreted as a sign the authorities do not want the scale of the outpouring of grief to become public.
State television channels Rossiya24 and Rossiya-1 instead discussed the Munich Security Conference and the Russian capture of Avdiivka in Ukraine, and featured the “Russia International Exhibit and Forum,” a patriotic showcase celebrating the food, technology and culture of each of the country’s regions.
Watching the steady flow of people bearing flowers, and under the increasing pressure of a police officer to move along, he slipped into an underground crosswalk with a request.
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Unpaywalled link:
"Detained" is inaccurate. Arrested, beaten, tortured and disappeared are all more accurate terms here.