{"id":178228,"date":"2021-02-14T21:24:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T18:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/russia-moves-to-eradicate-pro-navalny-flashlight-protests\/"},"modified":"2021-02-14T21:24:17","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T18:24:17","slug":"russia-moves-to-eradicate-pro-navalny-flashlight-protests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/russia-moves-to-eradicate-pro-navalny-flashlight-protests\/","title":{"rendered":"#Russia moves to eradicate pro-Navalny \u2018flashlight\u2019 protests"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Russia moves to eradicate pro-Navalny \u2018flashlight\u2019 protests<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

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MOSCOW \u2014 When the team of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged people to come out to their residential courtyards and shine their cellphone flashlights in a display of unity, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide demonstrations, the new protest format looked to some like a retreat.<\/p>\n

But not to Russian authorities, who moved vigorously to extinguish the illuminated protests planned for Sunday.<\/p>\n

Officials accused Navalny\u2019s allies of acting on NATO\u2019s instructions. Kremlin-backed TV channels warned that flashlight rallies were part of major uprisings around the world. State news<\/a> agencies cited unnamed sources saying a terrorist group was plotting attacks during unapp<\/a>roved mass protests.<\/p>\n

The suppression attempts represent a change of tactics for the authorities who once tried to weaken Navalny\u2019s influence by erasing him.<\/p>\n

Kremlin-controlled TV channels used to largely ignore protests called by Navalny. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never mentioned his most prominent critic by name. State news agencies referred to the politician and anti-corruption investigator as \u201ca blogger\u201d in the rare stories they ran mentioning him.<\/p>\n

\u201cNavalny went from a person whose name is not allowed to be mentioned to the main subject of discussion\u201d on state TV, Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalny\u2019s Foundations for Fighting Corruption, said in a YouTube<\/a> video Friday.<\/p>\n

Pevchikh credited Navalny\u2019s latest expose for the sudden surge in attention. His foundation\u2019s two-hour-long video alleging that a lavish palace on Black Sea was built for Putin through elaborate corruption has been watched over 111 million times on YouTube since it was posted on Jan. 19.<\/p>\n

The video went up two days after Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. The Russian government denies involvement and has said it has no evidence that Navalny was poisoned.<\/p>\n

While the high-profile arrest and the subsequent expose were a double blow to authorities, political analyst and former Kremlin speech writer Abbas Gallyamov says that keeping Navalny and his activity off the airwaves to deprive him of additional publicity no longer makes sense.<\/p>\n

\"Demonstrators
Demonstrators take part in a protest action in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and all political prisoners in St. Petersburg, Russia<\/figcaption>
EPA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cThe fact that this strategy has changed suggests that the pro-government television audience is somehow receiving information about Navalny\u2019s activities through other channels, recognizes him, is interested in his work, and in this sense, keeping the silence doesn\u2019t make any sense,\u201d Gallyamov said.<\/p>\n

The weekend protests in scores of cities last month over Navalny\u2019s detention represented the largest outpouring of popular discontent in years and appeared to have rattled the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

Police reportedly arrested about 10,000 people, and many demonstrators were beaten, while state media sought to downplay the scale of the protests.<\/p>\n

TV channels aired footage of empty squares in cities where protests were announced and claimed that few people showed up. Some reports portrayed police as polite and restrained, claiming officers had helped people with disabilities cross busy streets, handed out face masks to demonstrators and offered them hot tea.<\/p>\n

Once the protests died down and Navalny ally Leonid Volkov announced a pause until the spring, Kremlin-backed media reported that grassroots flash mobs titled \u201cPutin is our president\u201d started sweeping the country. State news channel Rossiya 24 broadcast videos from different cities of people dancing to patriotic songs and waving Russian flags, describing them as a genuine expression of support for Putin.<\/p>\n

Several independent online outlets reported that instructions to record videos in support of Putin came from the Kremlin and the governing United Russia party, and that people featured in some of the recordings were invited to shoots under false pretenses.<\/p>\n

The Russian president\u2019s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the Kremlin had nothing to do with the pro-Putin videos.<\/p>\n

\n
\"Demonstrators
Demonstrators take part in a protest action in support of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and all political prisoners in St. Petersburg, Russia<\/figcaption>
EPA<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

After Navalny\u2019s team posted its video involving the palace allegedly built for Putin, state channel Rossiya aired its own expos\u00e9 of Navalny. Anchor Dmitry Kiselev said that while working on the investigation in Germany, Navalny lived \u201cin the luxury he so much despises.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reporter sent to chronicle the allegedly luxurious lifestyle the politician maintained while abroad filmed inside a house Navalny rented but failed to capture any high-end items in the two-story building, which featured several bedrooms and a small swimming pool.<\/p>\n

She pointed to \u201ctwo sofas, a TV, fresh fruit on the table\u201d in the living room and \u201ca kitchen with a coffee machine,\u201d and described a bedroom as \u201cluxurious\u201d even though it didn\u2019t look much different from a room in a business hotel.<\/p>\n

In recent days, official media coverage has focused on plans for this weekend\u2019s flashlights-in-courtyards protest. Reports extensively quoted Navalny ally Volkov\u2019s social media post announcing the event and accused him of acting on instructions from his Western handlers, pointing to an online conference with European officials he took part in the day before.<\/p>\n

The political talk show \u201c60 Minutes\u201d devoted nearly a half-hour to the topic, calling the flashlight rally an idea from a handbook on revolutions. It aired footage of protesters shining flashlights during the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, mass rallies in Belarus last summer and other uprisings around the world.<\/p>\n

On Thursday, state news agencies Tass and RIA Novosti reported, citing anonymous sources, that a terrorist group from Syria was training insurgents for possible terrorist attacks in Russian cities \u201cat locations of mass rallies.\u201d<\/p>\n

The reports didn\u2019t refer to any specific protests. Neither did public warnings against \u201cunauthorized public events\u201d the Prosecutor General<\/a>\u2019s office and Russia\u2019s Interior Ministry issued Thursday, although the ministry mentioned events \u201cplanned for the nearest time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Kremlin is awfully scared of the flashlight action,\u201d because such a peaceful, light-hearted event would allow the opposition to build a rapport with new supporters who are not ready to be more visible and involved in the protests, Volkov said in a YouTube video.<\/p>\n

He suggested that the heavy-handed response to the announcement actually helped dispel skepticism about the courtyard demonstrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cI saw many posts on social media (saying) \u2018When Navalny\u2019s headquarters announced the flashlight rally, I thought what nonsense\u2026 But when I saw the Kremlin\u2019s reaction, I realized they were right to come up with it.\u2019\u201d\n <\/p><\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#Russia moves to eradicate pro-Navalny \u2018flashlight\u2019 protests” MOSCOW \u2014 When the team of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny urged people to come out to their residential courtyards and shine their cellphone flashlights in a display of unity, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide demonstrations, the new protest format looked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":178229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/nypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2021\/02\/Russia-Navalny-Protests.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&w=1200","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[70897],"tags":[93270,71505,4975],"class_list":["post-178228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-2-14-21","tag-alexei-navalny","tag-russia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/178229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}