OVD-Info said in a statement that 109 people had been detained in 23 cities as of 10:42 p.m. Moscow time (1942 GMT). Authorities have clamped down heavily on signs of dissent since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and in most cities, only a handful of people were held.
Navalny is serving combined sentences of 11-1/2 years for fraud and contempt of court on charges that he said were trumped up to silence him.
Footage from Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia’s two largest cities, showed police arresting individual demonstrators. One man could be seen briefly holding up a sign before Moscow police ushered him away, bent over, as he groaned in pain.
Another man, who held up a sign in English that read “Free Navalny,” was also arrested in Moscow.
In St. Petersburg, a woman accompanied by a child told reporters that “I’m against the war, that’s why they detained me with my underage kid.”
A court in the Siberian city of Tomsk on Monday jailed an associate of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny pending trial on extremism charges, according to an ally, part of an unrelenting crackdown on Russian political activists, independent journalists and rights workers.
Ksenia Fadeyeva, who used to run Navalny’s office in Tomsk and had a seat in a local legislature, was placed in pre-trial detention several months after her trial began.
According to her ally Andrei Fateyev, who reported the development on his Telegram channel, Fadeyeva was placed under house arrest three weeks ago over an alleged violation of restrictions imposed on her earlier. The prosecutor later contested that ruling and demanded she be put in custody, a move the judge supported, Fateyev said.
The activist has been charged with running an extremist group and promoting “activities of an organization that infringes on people’s rights.”
Fateyev argued that Fadeyeva was being punished by the authorities “for legal and open political activity, for fighting against corruption, for demanding alternation of power.”
A number of Navalny associates have faced extremism-related charges after the politician’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of regional offices were outlawed in 2021 as extremist groups, a move that exposed virtually anyone affiliated with them to prosecution.
Earlier this year, Navalny himself was convicted on extremism charges and sentenced to 19 years in prison. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term — all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he was recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He has been behind bars ever since, and his close allies left Russia under pressure from the authorities following mass protests that rocked the country after the politician’s arrest. The Kremlin has denied it was involved in Navalny’s poisoning.
Many people working in Navalny’s regional offices also left the country, but some stayed — and were arrested. Liliya Chanysheva, who ran Navalny’s office in the central city of Ufa, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison on extremism charges in June. Daniel Kholodny, former technical director of Navalny’s YouTube channel, received an eight-year prison term in August after standing trial with Navalny.
Fadeyeva in Tomsk faces up to 12 years, if convicted.
“Organizations linked to Alexei Navalny are believed to be staunch enemies of the authorities and have become the subject of large-scare repressions,” Natalia Zvyagina, Amnesty International’s Russia director, said in January.
Navalny, who is serving time in a penal colony east of Moscow, has faced various hardships, from repeated stints in a tiny solitary “punishment cell” to being deprived of pen and paper.
On Monday, his team reported that prison censors stopped giving him letters from his wife, Yulia. It published a photo of a handwritten letter to her from Navalny in which he says that one of her letters was “seized by the censors, as it contains information about initiating, planning or organizing a crime.”
In Geneva on Monday, Western countries repeatedly called on Russia to halt domestic repression of dissident voices and end its war in Ukraine — and human rights violations related to it — as Russia came under a regular review at the UN’s top rights body.
A delegation from Moscow, led by State Secretary and Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov, defended Russia’s actions to restrict some forms of protest voices that might threaten its domestic security. The session in Geneva was part of an exercise known as the universal periodic review, which all UN member states face every four or five years in connection with the UN-backed Human Rights Council.
Ksenia Fadeyeva, who used to run Navalny’s office in Tomsk and had a seat in a local legislature, was placed in pre-trial detention several months after her trial began.
According to her ally Andrei Fateyev, who reported the development on his Telegram channel, Fadeyeva was placed under house arrest three weeks ago over an alleged violation of restrictions imposed on her earlier. The prosecutor later contested that ruling and demanded she be put in custody, a move the judge supported, Fateyev said.
The activist has been charged with running an extremist group and promoting “activities of an organization that infringes on people’s rights.”
Fateyev argued that Fadeyeva was being punished by the authorities “for legal and open political activity, for fighting against corruption, for demanding alternation of power.”
A number of Navalny associates have faced extremism-related charges after the politician’s Foundation for Fighting Corruption and a network of regional offices were outlawed in 2021 as extremist groups, a move that exposed virtually anyone affiliated with them to prosecution.
Earlier this year, Navalny himself was convicted on extremism charges and sentenced to 19 years in prison. It was his fifth criminal conviction and his third and longest prison term — all of which his supporters see as a deliberate Kremlin strategy to silence its most ardent opponent.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 upon returning from Germany, where he was recovering from a nerve agent poisoning he blamed on the Kremlin. He has been behind bars ever since, and his close allies left Russia under pressure from the authorities following mass protests that rocked the country after the politician’s arrest. The Kremlin has denied it was involved in Navalny’s poisoning.
Many people working in Navalny’s regional offices also left the country, but some stayed — and were arrested. Liliya Chanysheva, who ran Navalny’s office in the central city of Ufa, was sentenced to 7 1/2 years in prison on extremism charges in June. Daniel Kholodny, former technical director of Navalny’s YouTube channel, received an eight-year prison term in August after standing trial with Navalny.
Fadeyeva in Tomsk faces up to 12 years, if convicted.
“Organizations linked to Alexei Navalny are believed to be staunch enemies of the authorities and have become the subject of large-scare repressions,” Natalia Zvyagina, Amnesty International’s Russia director, said in January.
Navalny, who is serving time in a penal colony east of Moscow, has faced various hardships, from repeated stints in a tiny solitary “punishment cell” to being deprived of pen and paper.
On Monday, his team reported that prison censors stopped giving him letters from his wife, Yulia. It published a photo of a handwritten letter to her from Navalny in which he says that one of her letters was “seized by the censors, as it contains information about initiating, planning or organizing a crime.”
In Geneva on Monday, Western countries repeatedly called on Russia to halt domestic repression of dissident voices and end its war in Ukraine — and human rights violations related to it — as Russia came under a regular review at the UN’s top rights body.
A delegation from Moscow, led by State Secretary and Deputy Justice Minister Andrei Loginov, defended Russia’s actions to restrict some forms of protest voices that might threaten its domestic security. The session in Geneva was part of an exercise known as the universal periodic review, which all UN member states face every four or five years in connection with the UN-backed Human Rights Council.
Jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny had an extra 19 years added to his jail term on Friday in a criminal case which he and his supporters said was trumped up to keep him behind bars and out of politics for even longer.
Navalny, 47, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic critic, is already serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years on fraud and other charges that he says are also bogus. His political movement has been outlawed and declared “extremist.”
A court at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow where he is serving his sentences, was trying him on Friday on six separate criminal charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organization.
The audio feed from the court was so poor that it was practically impossible to make out what the judge was saying.
Navalny’s team said the judge had added 19 years to his sentences as a result of the new charges. State prosecutors had asked the court to hand him another 20 years in a penal colony.
Dressed in his dark prison uniform and flanked by his lawyers, Navalny smiled at times as he listened to the judge.
In a message posted on social media a day earlier Navalny had predicted he would get a long jail term, but had said it didn’t really matter because he was also threatened with separate terrorism charges that could bring another decade.
Navalny had said the purpose of giving him extra jail time was to frighten Russians, but had urged them not to let that happen and to think hard about how best to resist what he called the “villains and thieves in the Kremlin.”
The charges relate to his role in his now defunct movement inside Russia, which the authorities said had been trying to foment a revolution by seeking to destabilize the socio-political situation.
Navalny, 47, President Vladimir Putin’s fiercest domestic critic, is already serving sentences totalling 11-1/2 years on fraud and other charges that he says are also bogus. His political movement has been outlawed and declared “extremist.”
A court at the IK-6 penal colony in Melekhovo, about 235 km (145 miles) east of Moscow where he is serving his sentences, was trying him on Friday on six separate criminal charges, including inciting and financing extremist activity and creating an extremist organization.
The audio feed from the court was so poor that it was practically impossible to make out what the judge was saying.
Navalny’s team said the judge had added 19 years to his sentences as a result of the new charges. State prosecutors had asked the court to hand him another 20 years in a penal colony.
Dressed in his dark prison uniform and flanked by his lawyers, Navalny smiled at times as he listened to the judge.
In a message posted on social media a day earlier Navalny had predicted he would get a long jail term, but had said it didn’t really matter because he was also threatened with separate terrorism charges that could bring another decade.
Navalny had said the purpose of giving him extra jail time was to frighten Russians, but had urged them not to let that happen and to think hard about how best to resist what he called the “villains and thieves in the Kremlin.”
The charges relate to his role in his now defunct movement inside Russia, which the authorities said had been trying to foment a revolution by seeking to destabilize the socio-political situation.
