Thousands March in Pro-Opposition Rallies Across Russia
By VOA News January 28, 2018
Thousands of pro-opposition marchers, some braving temperatures as low as minus 45 degrees Celsius, rallied in dozens of Russian cities Sunday to back jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.
Police arrested Navalny while he was on his way to a rally in central Moscow. He shouted "swindlers and thieves" before police jumped on him and threw him into a bus.
Earlier, police raided his Moscow headquarters, breaking into the office with a power saw. They claim someone had reported a bomb threat.
Navalny later said on Twitter that he was released pending hearings.
He is urging Russians to boycott the March presidential election, in which Vladimir Putin is just about assured to win a fourth term.Navalny is calling it a "pseudo-election." He is barred from running because of a suspended prison sentence for embezzlement – a charge he and his followers say was contrived and political.
Putin has been Russian president or prime minister since the last day of 1999. Many of the young marchers who have known no other leader say they are sick of living in what one of them calls a "quagmire."
"As long as I've been alive, Putin has always been in. I'm tired of nothing being changed." a 19 year-old marcher in St. Petersburg said.
"They took these elections away from us, they took away our votes. Our candidate was not allowed to run," an opposition member in Vladivostok complained.
Others waved signs denouncing Putin as a "thief" and a "czar. Some also threw snowballs at a government building in Moscow. Police were restrained, but an independent monitor says more than 250 people were arrested across the country Sunday.
Navalny made his name by using social media to report on what he says is corruption by top Russian leaders.
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