Moscow: A Moscow court ordered Monday the wife of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny to pay a fine of 20,000 rubles (about USD 265). Yulia Navalnaya has been fined for violating protest regulations after she attended a demonstration in the Russian capital to demand the release of Alexei Navalny.
Tens of thousands took to the streets in dozens of Russian cities Sunday. They chanted slogans against Russian President Vladimir Putin and demanded that authorities free Navalny. He was jailed last month and faces a prison term.
His wife, Yulia, joined a protest here that took place despite unprecedented security measures. She was quickly detained and charged with participating in an unauthorised rally. A court Monday ordered Navalnaya to pay a fine, her lawyer Svetlana Davydova told the ‘Interfax’ news agency. Davydova said the defense plans to appeal the ruling.
The protests are the largest outpouring of discontent Russia had seen in years. The mass protests engulfed dozens of Russian cities for the second weekend in a row despite efforts by Russian authorities to stifle the unrest triggered by the jailing of 44-year-old Navalny, the Kremlin’s fiercest critic.
Navalny was arrested January 17 upon his return from Germany. He had spent five months in Germany recovering from nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. Russian authorities have rejected the accusations. He faces a prison term for alleged probation violations from a 2014 money-laundering conviction which has been widely seen as politically motivated.
Russian authorities cracked down hard on the demonstrators Sunday. They detained over 5,400 people across the country, according to ‘OVD-Info’, a legal aid group that monitors arrests at protests. The group said it was the most in its nine-year history of keeping records in the Putin era.