Alexei Navalny: Police in Russia crack down on protests as human rights group claims ‘at least 100 arrested’

Published

1 year ago

February 17, 2024

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Police in Russia have cracked down on people gathered to mark the death of opposition leader Alexei Navalny – with one human rights group claiming that at least 100 people have been arrested.

Footage and pictures from Russia’s two largest cities – Moscow and St Petersburg – showed officers ripping away placards from protesters and dragging others away from makeshift memorials to Mr Navalny.

Journalists at the site in Moscow – set up at a monument to victims of Soviet repression – were also filmed being detained.

One woman at the site told Sky News: “All that is happening over these years, on the territory of my beloved country, is a disgrace.”

Another added: “I am furious, of course. They have finally killed him.”

According to the Russian human rights group, OVD-info, at least 100 people have been arrested across eight cities, including Moscow, St Petersburg and Krasnodar, during gatherings to mark Mr Navalny’s death.

Though police have not given any details on arrests, prosecutors have warned Russians against participating in any mass protest in Moscow.

It comes after jailed dissident Mr Navalny, a chief critic of President Vladimir Putin who had campaigned against official corruption and led major anti-Kremlin protests, was confirmed dead by prison authorities in Russia on Friday, at the age of 47.

Protests across Europe

Protests were also held outside of Russia, including in London, where people carrying pictures of Mr Navalny’s face demonstrated outside the Russian embassy near Notting Hill.

One man at the protest, who did not wish to be named, said: “I want Russia to be a country that is respected all over the world.

“I want to love my flag. But today it’s not possible because the flag represents the war.”

In Berlin, hundreds gathered near the Russian embassy chanting in a mixture of Russian, German and English, including “Putin to the Hague”.

In Lithuania, formerly run from Moscow but now a member of NATO and the European Union, mourners placed flowers and candles by a portrait of Mr Navalny.

“He was always with us, so it is all surreal,” said Lyusya Shtein, 26, a Pussy Riot activist who has lived in Vilnius since leaving Russia in 2022.

Groups also gathered in cities including Rome, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Sofia, Geneva, and The Hague, among others.

World leaders react

World leaders, meanwhile, reacted to the news of Mr Navalny’s death, with Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy firmly pointing the blame on Mr Putin.

“It is obvious that he was killed by Putin,” he said during a visit to the Munich Security Conference in Germany.

“Putin doesn’t care who dies – only for him to hold his position. This is why he must hold onto nothing. Putin must lose everything and be held responsible for his deeds,” he added.

US President Joe Biden said Washington does not know exactly what happened, “but there is no doubt that the death of Navalny was a consequence of something Putin and his thugs did”.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, whose country temporarily took in Mr Navalny in 2020 after he was poisoned with a nerve agent, praised the Kremlin critic’s bravery and said his death makes clear “what kind of regime this is [In Russia]”.

Speaking at the security conference in Munich, his wife Yulia Navalnaya, said: “For many years we cannot trust Putin and the Putin government. They always lie.

“But if this is true, I want Putin and everyone around him to know that they will be held accountable for everything they did to our country, to my family. And this day will come very soon.

“I want to call on the international community and all people to unite and defeat this evil.”

UK summons Russian ambassador

The UK’s foreign secretary, Lord Cameron, said Mr Putin must be held accountable and said there should be “consequences” for the Russian president.

Foreign Office officials have summoned the Russian ambassador to “make clear that we hold the Russian authorities fully responsible”.

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Mr Navalny was serving a 19-year prison sentence on extremism charges in a remote penal colony above the Arctic Circle at the time of his death.

He had been behind bars since he returned from Germany in January 2021, serving time on various charges that he rejected as a politically motivated effort to keep him imprisoned for life.

Russian prison authorities said Mr Navalny had felt unwell following a walk on Friday and lost consciousness.

Efforts by medical staff to revive him failed, according to the service.

World

Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

Published

4 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza

The targeted killing of Al Jazeera journalist Anas Al-Sharif and four other colleagues by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) late on Sunday silences more crucial reporting voices from inside Gaza.

The IDF wasted no time in releasing a statement claiming it had “eliminated” Al-Sharif, calling him a “terrorist” who “posed” as a journalist for Al Jazeera.

Gaza latest: Follow live updates

The Committee to Protect Journalists warned in July that Al-Sharif was the victim of an Israeli smear campaign and that they feared for his safety.

The IDF had previously released documents which they say proved his involvement with Hamas.

No word from them on his colleagues – Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa – who they also killed. We are chasing.

Al-Sharif’s death – and that of his four colleagues – is a chilling message to the journalistic community both on the ground and elsewhere ahead of Israel’s impending push into Gaza City.

There will now be fewer journalists left to cover that story, and – if it is even possible – they will be that bit more fearful.

This is how journalists are silenced. Israel knows this full well.

It has also not allowed international journalists independent access to enter Gaza to report on the war.

Al-Sharif’s death has sent shockwaves across the region, where he was a household name. He was prolific on social media and had a huge following.

I was watching horrifying footage of the immediate aftermath of the strike in the taxi on my way into the bureau, and the driver told me how he and his family had all cried for Anas when the news came in.

His little daughter cried because of Al-Sharif’s little daughter, Sham, who she knew from social media.

“They call everyone Hamas,” my taxi driver said. “Men, women, children”.

Last month, Al-Sharif wrote this post: “I haven’t stopped covering [the crisis] for a moment in 21 months, and today I say it outright… and with indescribable pain.

“I am drowning in hunger, trembling in exhaustion and resisting the fainting that follows me every moment… Gaza is dying. And we die with it.”

This is what journalists in Gaza are facing, every single day.

World

Israel’s PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Published

10 hours ago

August 11, 2025

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Israel's PM tries to get on front foot in propaganda war he knows he is losing

Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.

Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.

He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.

This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.

Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.

If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?

Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.

He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.

“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.

I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.

Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.

The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.

“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”

This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.

It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.

He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.

This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.

World

Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’

Published

16 hours ago

August 10, 2025