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Police arrested more than 500 people at rallies in Siberia and the Russian Far East on Sunday as supporters of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny took to the streets to protest his imprisonment, despite the biting cold and the threat of arrest.
Rallies are also scheduled in Moscow later Sunday, as part of a campaign to secure the release of President Vladimir Putin’s main opponent. He was arrested on January 17 after returning from Germany where he was recovering from nerve poisoning in Russia last summer.
Police have so far arrested around 519 people, protest monitor OVD-Info said. Police said the protests were not allowed and would be halted as they were last weekend. OVD-Info said more than 4,000 people were arrested during the rallies last week.
In the far eastern city of Vladivostok, where a rally began at 02:00 GMT, police blocked protesters from entering the center, forcing them to move towards the waterfront and the frozen waters of the Bay of the Love.
Video footage showed protesters chanting “Putin is a thief” as they tied their hands and walked on the ice in temperatures of around -13 degrees Celsius (8.6 degrees Fahrenheit).
In Tomsk, the Siberian town Navalny visited before suddenly collapsing on a domestic flight last August, protesters gathered outside a concert hall and chanted “Let him go!” and waving Russian flags.
OVD-Info said police had arrested 261 people, including 76 in Vladivostok, since the rallies began. Supporters of Navalny in Moscow plan to rally at 0900 GMT on Sunday near the Kremlin administration and the headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, where protesters in 1991 shot down a statue of the founder of the secret police during the Soviet break.
Authorities have closed seven metro stations in the Russian capital and said they will restrict pedestrian traffic in the area due to the protest plans. There was a heavy police presence in central Moscow early on Sunday.
Navalny, 44, accuses Putin of ordering his murder, which the Kremlin denies. He is accused of parole violations which he says are trumped up. A court is due to meet next week to consider imposing a prison sentence of up to three and a half years.
The protests that followed Navalny’s return to Moscow have left Putin in a dilemma of how to respond. Polls show pent-up frustrations among Russians after years of declining wages and the fallout from the pandemic.
The West has told Moscow to let Navalny go, and his allies have called on US President Joe Biden to sanction 35 people they say are Putin’s close allies.
To galvanize home support in an online video that has been viewed more than 100 million times, Navalny accused Putin of being the ultimate owner of a lavish Black Sea palace, which the Kremlin leader denied.
On the eve of the protests, Arkady Rotenberg, a businessman and former Judo training partner of Putin, said he owned the property.
Many of Navalny’s prominent allies have been the target of a crackdown this week. Several, including his brother Oleg, are under house arrest.
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