Moscow protests pose problem for Putin

Source: Politico | July 29, 2019 | Marc Bennetts

Police crack down on pro-democracy activists ahead of September’s vote for the Moscow city assembly.

MOSCOW — Bloodied protesters, a hunger strike, police raids, more than a thousand arrests, a mysterious “illness” afflicting the Kremlin’s most prominent critic — a long-simmering dispute over a local Moscow election boiled over this weekend into a major political crisis for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a weekend of demonstrations, featuring thousands of anti-government protestors and sometimes violent clashes with police, Alexei Navalny, the opposition’s best-known figure, was hospitalized Sunday after suffering what health officials said was an “allergic reaction” while in police custody.

One of his doctors, Anastasia Vasilieva, said it was possible that he had been poisoned. “We cannot exclude toxic damage to the skin by chemicals induced by a ‘third person,’” she wrote in a Facebook post.

Navalny was jailed for 30 days on Wednesday for calling on Russians to demonstrate. His did not appear to be in any immediate danger, but reports of his illness has caused concern.

A number of other government critics have been poisoned since Putin came to power in 2000, and Boris Nemtsov, a well-known opposition politician, was shot dead outside the Kremlin in 2015. At least 20 of Navalny’s supporters who arrived at the hospital on Sunday evening were detained by police before they could enter the clinic.

The weekend protest came just days after election officials refused to allow opposition candidates onto the ballot for a September 8 election for the Moscow legislature, the City Duma. Groups of protesters chanting “Russia without Putin!” and “Russia will be free!” spread out across Moscow, at one point blocking traffic on the city’s ring road. Estimates of the number of people who took part in the unsanctioned rally ranged from 3,500 to 20,000.

Riot police and National Guard officers used batons and, reportedly, electroshock devices to disperse pro-democracy demonstrators. The violence was the worst at a protest in Moscow since 2012, when police and demonstrators clashed on the eve of Putin’s inauguration for a fourth presidential term.

At least 1,373 people were detained, as thousands of opposition supporters attempted to rally outside Moscow City Hall, just a short walk from Red Square, according to OVD info, a website that monitors protest-related arrests. Around 80 people were injured.

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