'Putin is turning his main threat into a martyr' Will attack on Navalny

MOSCOW – To his supporters, anti-corruption figure Alexei Navalny, whose detention has sparked massive protests across Russia, was sent to prison for the crime of daring to survive President Vladimir Putin's efforts to poison him."Putin is turning his main threat into a martyr, a kind of Russian Nelson Mandela," said Jaka Bizilj, the director of the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation, referring to South Africa's anti-apartheid hero and former president. In August, Bizilj organized for Navalny to be evacuated by private plane to Germany after he fell into a coma in the Siberian city of Omsk. Russia says there is no evidence the longtime Kremlin critic was poisoned. But German scientists determined Navalny had been exposed to the Russian military grade nerve agent Novichok, a claim backed by the U. S. and several European countries. An investigation by Bellingcat, a digital research organization, traced the poisoning to Russian security agents. Five months after the near-fatal attack, Navalny returned Moscow in mid-January. Just before takeoff from a Berlin airport, he posted a video to Instagram of his wife quoting a line from a popular Russia crime movie: "Bring us some vodka, boy. We're flying home." Navalny was immediately arrested at the border. Russian authorities said that by seeking medical treatment abroad he violated the terms of his parole in connection with an embezzlement case from 2014 that is widely considered to be politically motivated. For several weeks, tens of thousands of Russians have taken to the streets — and ice, one demonstration was held on a frozen lake in Kazan in southwest at -45 degrees Fahrenheit — across the country to demand Navalny's release. More unrest is expected after Navalny was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison on Feb. 3."(Putin’s) only method is killing people," Navalny said as the judge read the verdict. "For as much as he pretends to be a great geopolitician, he'll go down in history as a poisoner." As Navalny stood in a glass cage guarded by court bailiffs he pointed to his wife Yulia on the other side of the court and drew a heart on the glass wall. Analysts say the demonstrations represent a burgeoning protest movement that is growing exponentially and is spurred on by myriad issues coming to a head including increased economic hardship, frustration with the coronavirus pandemic, and the shocking scale of graft that for decades has been perpetrated by Putin and Russia's political elite – exposed by anti-corruption campaigners such as Navalny."This is qualitatively different from what we've seen before," said Robert Legvold, an expert on Russia and professor emeritus at Columbia University, noting that the protests have occurred not just across Russia but across ideological groups (from pro-democracy reformers to conservative nationalists). "A very substantial portion of that population no longer regards the government as legitimate," he said. It's not difficult to see why.


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Article Link: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/02/06/putin-martyring-navalny-what-slams-press-protest-mean-russia/4401519001/


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