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Jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny called on Russians to continue protesting the war in Ukraine.
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He urged Russians not to be a “nation of frightened silent people” on Putin’s aggression.
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Putin has been accused of pulling the strings behind an attempt to assassinate Navalny in 2020.
Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Russians on Wednesday to continue protesting President Vladimir Putin and the increasingly brutal war he’s launched against Ukraine.
“Let’s at least not become a nation of frightened silent people. Of cowards who pretend not to notice the aggressive war against Ukraine unleashed by our obviously insane czar,” Navalny tweeted.
He urged individuals “in Russia, Belarus or on the other side of the planet” to plan demonstrations and take to their main squares to protest on weekdays, weekends, and holidays.
“Everything has a price, and now, in the spring of 2022, we must pay this price,” he said. “There’s no one to do it for us. Let’s not ‘be against the war.’ Let’s fight against the war.”
Since Russia launched its attack on Ukraine last week, Russians took to the streets to protest in major cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow — and in dozens of other cities across the country.
Protests are not limited to Russia, however, and have erupted in cities around the world as people rally behind Ukraine’s resistance to Russia’s aggression. Putin sold this conflict, in part, on the message that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people,” making scenes of Ukrainian resistance to Russian troops especially glaring.
Navalny was poisoned in August 2020 with the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok, and flown to Germany for treatment. When he returned to Moscow, he was sentenced to two and a half years in prison over claims that he violated parole for a 2014 fraud conviction. Top rights groups have denounced the charges against Navalny as politically motivated.
Putin has been accused of pulling the strings behind Navalny’s attempted assassination. The Russian leader’s opponents tend to wind up dead or imprisoned.
“They say that someone who cannot attend a rally and does not risk being arrested for it cannot call for it,” Navalny said. “I’m already in prison, so I think I can.”
Russian authorities have recently moved to extend Navalny’s sentence by 15 years.
Navalny’s poisoning and imprisonment have prompted global condemnation, as well as sanctions from the US and other countries. There were mass protests in Russia over Navalny’s detention. In comments to Insider last June, Navalny’s top aide said Putin was “dumb” to throw the anti-corruption campaigner behind bars because it turned him into a symbol for people to rally behind.
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