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Protest in Moscow after Navalny Conviction

Andras Fekete

People protest against the court ver­dict sen­ten­cing Rus­sian oppos­i­tion leader Alexei Navalny to 5 years in jail. About 13–15 thou­sands of people gathered in the cen­ter of Moscow in front of the State Duma, Manezh Square and Tver­skaya Street. The pro­test­ers, chant­ing “Free­dom to Navalny!”

On Thursday, July 18, Navalny was found guilty of head­ing a group that embezzled tim­ber worth 16m roubles ($500,000) from the Kirovles state tim­ber com­pany while work­ing as an adviser to Kirov’s gov­ernor Nikita Belykh.

The demon­strat­ors gathered along two main thor­ough­fares of Moscow, in the vast Manezh Square across from the Krem­lin, wav­ing por­traits of Navalny and demand­ing free­dom for the 36-year-old law­yer, polit­ical act­iv­ist and Moscow may­oral candidate.