RUSSIAN President Vladimir Putin’s officials are shaken by the extent of Saturday’s nationwide protests in support of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, one of his close friends told DW on Sunday.
“They really are afraid,” said Vladimir Ashurkov, director of the non-profit Anti-Corruption Foundation, referring to the large police turnout and the arrest of more than 3,000 people.
Asked why so many people had been ready to risk arrest on Saturday, he said: first, it was Moscow’s “unlawful” arrest of Navalny last weekend on return from a five-month recuperation in Germany where he received treatment for a near-fatal poisoning in Siberia last August.
Russian police break up pro-Navalny protests
The other factor, Ashurkov said, was the dissident movement’s release of “the video exposing Mr. Putin and his corruption in the form of a billion-euro mansion in the south of Russia.”
Russians turned out, he added, “to protest the detention of Navalny, but also against the
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