There has been a lot going on over the past couple months in the world, but a story that seems to have disappeared from the news headlines as of recently are the anti-Putin protests that have been occurring this year. Thousands of Russians have been gathering in major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg to protest the current government. These types of protests have been occurring for decades now in Russia, but they are particularly severe over the past couple of months for a couple of reasons.
First, last July, a constitutional amendment in Russia was established that allows a Russian president to run for two more terms. This enables Putin, the current president of Russia, to extend his rule until 2036. To put this into perspective, Putin started his first term on January 1st, 2000. The amendment was in fact officially signed into law this Monday. Although Putin is relatively popular with the Russian populace, there is a growing minority opposition to his authoritarian-like rule over the country due to many corruption and election scandals. Many of these have been exposed by Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny.
He is the second major reason why protests have been occurring more recently. Late last year, while he was traveling out of Siberia by plane, he was poisoned by what was later found to be a military nerve agent. Navalny was hastily evacuated to Germany for treatment, and barely made it out with his life. It is believed that the Russian Federal Security Service was attempting to assassinate Navalny in order to silence the head of the opposition. After Navalny recovered, he flew back to Russia, and was arrested immediately upon entering the country on charges of violating his house arrest check-ins, even though he was hospitalized during this entire time span. In February, Navalny was sentenced, and is now to stay in jail for multiple years. This is when Navalny supporters called for these large protests throughout the country.
Although it isn’t entirely clear when he will be released from jail, the situation doesn’t look good for him. He has been on a hunger strike, and has been denied access to his personal doctor as his health is deteriorating. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem likely he will make it out of jail alive. Although he might die in prison, the better question is whether or not the flame of the Russian opposition protests will.
This was a great blog post! It is hard to believe that such corruption and poisoning of governmental officials actually occurs within the world. Although I am not too informed about this current situation in Russia, it appears that Navalny’s arrest upon reentry into the country has a political motive behind it. I agree that the state of the Russian opposition will be important to watch as Navalny’s conditions worsen in prison.