Saturday’s rally in support of Abdumumin Gadzhiev was banned, as was the rally for fair elections in Moscow. However, while the organizers of the first rally decided to bypass the ban and move the event to a virtual format, the protesters in Moscow still tried to gather near the mayor’s office. Compared to previous protests, the radicalized demonstrators broke through police barriers in several places, but were eventually pushed back by a coordinated mass of security forces. As a result, the protest ended with the beating of its participants, facilitated by the tactics chosen by its leaders.
Throughout the day, groups of demonstrators dispersed throughout the city, causing problems for the police in many places and even passing by Lubyanka Square. However, Ilya Yashin and Dmitry Gudkov, who were unexpectedly released from custody, called on everyone to gather at Trubnaya Square, where they were met and neutralized by superior police forces.
The result of the protest in numbers: 1373 arrests, many of whom were brutally beaten by police and some of whom now face criminal charges for resisting police officers. All these scenes, which went viral, instantly shattered Moscow’s long-cultivated image of the European facade of Russia, where people live «as in a civilized world».
Nothing prevented the authorities from continuing this spectacle — not all the opposition candidates who were allowed to participate in the elections would have been able to win them, and certainly the appearance of several opposition figures in the Moscow City Duma would not have undermined the power of Sergei Sobyanin or, even more, the Kremlin. However, they decided to eliminate inconvenient elements at a distance — by simply excluding them from the elections. And they made it clear — the era of «European decorations» in the regime’s policy is over even in Moscow, whose residents have long entertained illusions that they have special rights compared to other powerless Russians (they do, but not rights, only material benefits).
Apparently, in order to reinforce this message, it was decided to address Alexei Navalny personally, who is considered by many to be the leader of the non-systemic opposition. It should be noted, however, that in addition to questions about his own views, which are shared especially by Muslims and which we have expressed more than once, he has so far enjoyed suspicious tolerance from the authorities. While key figures of Muslim civil society in the Caucasus were simply eliminated, and politicians and journalists like Nemtsov, Politkovskaya, and Shekochikhin suffered the same fate in Russia itself, Navalny, despite several administrative arrests, has so far been released on probation and even allowed to travel abroad several times a year.
It is quite possible, however, that as the confrontation in the country intensifies, this strange tolerance of the authorities towards Navalny will come to an end. On Saturday evening, it was announced for the first time, and yesterday it became widely known that the politician, who was being held in a special detention center under another administrative arrest, was taken to a city hospital with very strange symptoms. The official diagnosis of the doctors is allergy, but according to his lawyer and personal physician it is something else. This is how Anastasia Vasilyeva, an ophthalmologist, and Yaroslav Ashikhmin, a cardiologist and candidate of medical sciences, described their patient’s condition:
«What happened to him? What is the presumed diagnosis? Severe edema and severe hyperemia of the upper and lower eyelids, periocular area (around the eyes), purulent discharge from the right conjunctival cavity, severe itching. Multiple papulopustular eruptions on the skin of the neck, back, chest and elbows. The clinical complaints and symptoms correspond to acute toxic keratoconjunctivitis and dermatitis, as well as general intoxication (damage to the skin of the body). As a doctor who treated Alexei for a very severe eye burn two years ago, I can confidently say that both in 2017 and now, this is the result of the harmful effects of unidentified chemical substances. Alexei does not have and never had any allergies. Moreover, he ate the same food as all the detainees and did not use any new perfumes or personal hygiene products.»
It is also worth noting that his doctors were not allowed access to Navalny for a thorough examination, diagnosis and treatment. Moreover, the head doctor of the hospital where the politician was detained, Olga Sharapova, is not only a member of United Russia, but several years ago received an apartment in the same building as FSO employees close to Putin — the service without which, as many believe, the murder of Boris Nemtsov would not have taken place.
Time will tell where this leads Navalny. It is already clear that this regime is using the tactic of intimidating all inconvenient figures not only on the periphery and in the provinces, but also in the center of the country.