Rallies were held in dozens of cities across Russia on Wednesday in support of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who is now in his third week of a hunger strike.
OVD-Info, a monitoring group, said 1,496 protesters were arrested, including 662 in St. Petersburg. The rallies coincided with Russian President Vladimir Putin's annual address to the country, and while he did not mention Navalny, Putin did warn "whomever organizes any provocations that threaten our core security will regret this like they've never regretted anything before."
Navalny, who survived a nerve agent attack last year, was arrested in January after returning to Russia from Germany. The 44-year-old began his hunger strike over what he said was the prison's failure to properly treat him for back and leg pain. Navalny's allies say he is in declining health and at risk of cardiac arrest and kidney failure, and they want him to be able to see his own doctors. Russia's human rights commissioner on Tuesday said four doctors have visited Navalny, and he has no serious health problems.
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
Navalny's wife, Yulia, attended the Moscow rally, where supporters chanted, "Freedom to Navalny!" and "Let the doctors in!" Before the rally began, Navalny's spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, and ally Lyubov Sobol were detained at their homes, and Yarmysh has been jailed for 10 days after being accused of inciting protesters. "This is repression," Navalny aide Ruslan Shaveddinov tweeted. "This cannot be accepted. We need to fight this darkness."
-
France makes first arrests in Louvre jewels heistSpeed Read Two suspects were arrested in connection with the daytime theft of royal jewels from the museum
-
Trump pardons crypto titan who enriched familySpeed Read Binance founder Changpeng Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to enabling money laundering while CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange
-
Thieves nab French crown jewels from LouvreSpeed Read A gang of thieves stole 19th century royal jewels from the Paris museum’s Galerie d’Apollon
-
Arsonist who attacked Shapiro gets 25-50 yearsSpeed Read Cody Balmer broke into the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion and tried to burn it down
-
Man charged over LA’s deadly Palisades Firespeed read 29-year-old Jonathan Rinderknecht has been arrested in connection with the fire that killed 12 people
-
4 dead in shooting, arson attack in Michigan churchSpeed Read A gunman drove a pickup truck into a Mormon church where he shot at congregants and then set the building on fire
-
2 kids killed in shooting at Catholic school massSpeed Read 17 others were wounded during a morning mass at the Annunciation Catholic School in Minneapolis
-
Australian woman found guilty of mushroom murdersspeed read Erin Patterson murdered three of her ex-husband's relatives by serving them toxic death cap mushrooms
