“Peaceful rally” of Navalnists could result in fights with riot police
The headquarters of opposition blogger Alexei Navalny, who announced the suspension of protests a few days ago, suddenly changed their decision and announced a new event on February 14. On this day, adherents need to go out into their yards and shine their flashlights.
This was stated by the blogger’s comrade-in-arms, Leonid Volkov, who fled to Berlin, the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“We will just do everything much more cunningly and will not try to directly interact with the police. We will move away from this,” Volkov said.
He hopes to increase the number of participants in this way.
“Out of a hundred people who might have wanted or could have left, 99 didn’t go through, because some have children, some have work, some are just scared, some were threatened with expulsion, some cannot afford to be arrested or fined..
The new audience does not consist of experienced hardcore activists, who will sit under arrest for 10 days like two fingers on the asphalt. Those who cannot imagine that they will now go out into the street, where riot police can kill with a baton and so on. We must involve them, we must find a form of protest activity for them so that they are not disappointed,” the extremist argues.
Political scientist Abbas Gallyamov believes that if the flashlight campaign fails, the Navalnists will move on to more radical actions.
“If this action fails, what will be the main result? That people are ready to go out and fight with riot police, but they no longer want to protest peacefully. This will be an indicator of how radical the protest is, how determined people are.
They no longer want to play, as the Belarusians gave flowers to their riot policemen, but ours no longer want, it turns out, such innocent actions for children, they want it seriously. At a minimum, they want to capture the street, that is, if they are not going to storm the Kremlin, then at a minimum, they want to capture the street. But they don’t want to participate in the games,” Gallyamov said.
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