Before a new planned protest action, the Russian police searched the offices of employees of the imprisoned Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny. Navalny’s team from the city of Chelyabinsk in the Urals published photos of the upside down rooms on Telegram today. The police had previously searched a Moscow office. The activists suspected a connection to their protest planned for tomorrow.
People all over Russia are called on Valentine’s Day to stand in front of their houses in the evening and hold up flashlights to express their solidarity with Navalny. After the mass protests of the past few weeks with a total of more than 11,000 arrests, the flashlight protest is said to be safer for the participants.
Unlike the unauthorized mass protests on January 23 and 31, this action is not officially prohibited. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently announced that they were not interested in a „cat and mouse game“ but would pursue possible violations of the law.
