MOSCOW, July 18 (RIA Novosti) – Police in Moscow blocked off a central square near the Kremlin on Thursday afternoon, yelling into loudspeakers that the area is closed, after thousands of supporters of opposition leader Alexei Navalny pledged to turn out for unsanctioned anti-Kremlin rallies.
As a trickle of civilians began flowing into Manezh Square in the early evening, police muscled some of them away from the area, cordoned off with metal barricades. Within an hour the crowd – sometimes clapping as Belarusian protesters famously did in 2011, sometimes chanting “Shame!” – had grown much larger and spilled into surrounding streets.
Journalists saw several protesters being led to police trucks, dozens of which were reportedly parked on nearby streets.
Navalny, a whistle-blowing blogger and one of Russia’s most prominent opposition protest leaders, was sentenced to five years in prison Thursday on embezzlement charges linked to the 2009 sale of timber by a state-run company at allegedly below-market prices. His co-defendant in the trial, Pyotr Ofitserov, was sentenced to four years in jail.
The guilty verdict against Navalny sparked outrage among his supporters, with over 10,000 signing up on social networks by late Thursday afternoon to attend an unauthorized demonstration in Moscow and other locations nationwide.
“I am here because it’s disgusting. I’d have never cared for politics if there was order. But there is none, and they [the authorities] have been stealing all our money,” Vitaly, a doctor in his 20s, told RIA Novosti about his reasons for coming to Manezh Square.
Earlier in the day, city authorities warned against any unsanctioned protest activity.
“All attempts to hold any events will be regarded by the law enforcement authorities as unsanctioned,” City Hall’s security department head Alexei Mayorov told RIA Novosti, warning that police would break up any unauthorized rally.
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