“Leaders who are secure in their own legitimacy don’t arrest their peaceful opponents for protesting.”
Guardian News/YouTube
Russian police forces cracked down on protesters on Saturday in response to demonstrations before Russian President Vladimir Putin’s inauguration to a fourth term, with law enforcement officials arresting nearly 1,600 Russians across dozens of cities in the country.
Included in the arrests was Putin’s most prominent opponent, Alexei Navalny, who was carried out of a Moscow square during a massive protest where demonstrators chanted “Putin is a thief” and “Russia will be free,” according to The Associated Press .
The protests — which ran under the slogan “He is not our czar” — showed the massive support garnered by Navalny’s anti-Putin campaign.
“I think that Putin isn’t worthy of leading this country. He has been doing it for 18 years and has done nothing good for it,” one Moscow demonstrator told the AP. “He should leave for good.”
Navalny is expected to be charged with disobeying police, carrying a sentence of up to 15 days, a stretch he’s done in prison multiple times already.
According to OVD-Info, a group that tracks political protests and oppression, police arrested 1,599 individuals across 26 Russian cities, including nearly 1,000 arrests in Moscow and St. Petersburg alone.
The U. S. has condemned the actions of the Russian police, with State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert saying, “Leaders who are secure in their own legitimacy don’t arrest their peaceful opponents for protesting.”
The United States condemns #Russia ’s detention of hundreds of peaceful protestors and calls for their immediate release. Leaders who are secure in their own legitimacy don’t arrest their peaceful opponents for protesting.
— Heather Nauert (@statedeptspox) May 5,2018
Putin will be inaugurated to a fourth six-year term on Monday after winning 77 percent of the vote in the election last month. Protesters argue that the election was rigged after Navalny was barred from running on the ballot against Putin.
Aaron Credeur is a News Fellow at IJR. He has written on a variety of national topics, including the 2016 presidential election, the state of liberal… more
