Hundreds Detained at Moscow Protest After Arrest of Journalist

(Bloomberg) -- Russian police detained more than 400 people, including opposition leader Alexey Navalny, at a demonstration in downtown Moscow on Wednesday in the wake of the arrest of a prominent anti-corruption journalist.

Though the reporter was unexpectedly released after the charges were dropped Tuesday, anger among his supporters remained high. Authorities had refused a permit for the march, citing a national holiday Wednesday, but more than a thousand protesters gathered anyway, calling police “the shame of Russia.” By mid-afternoon, police said more than 200 had been detained, but OVD-Info, a tracking website, put the total over 400.

“They were detaining people en masse and rather roughly,” Nikolai Svanidze, a member of the Kremlin’s human-rights advisory panel, wrote in a website statement. “The detentions were arbitrary.”

Navalny ally Lyubov Sobol said on Twitter, “He was just standing there,” adding a photo of police wrestling the opposition leader into a bus for detainees.

Turnout at the protest had been expected to be much greater until the authorities made the sudden U-turn late Tuesday, dropping drug charges against journalist Ivan Golunov for lack of evidence. Golunov, who had investigated corruption among local officials in Moscow in his articles for the Meduza news website, denied the charges and said police had planted the drugs.

His case drew an unusual outpouring of support even from prominent figures usually loyal to the Kremlin -- movie and music stars, state TV reporters and some legislators. Hundreds of supporters had picketed police headquarters since his arrest June 6. At a Kremlin ceremony Wednesday where President Vladimir Putin distributed official awards, one of the invitees was wearing a T-shirt in support of Golunov, TV Rain reported.

After his release, authorities granted a permit for a demonstration in support of him next week, although his backers hadn’t requested one for that date. The Interior Minister suspended the officers involved in the arrest pending an investigation and said he would seek to remove the commanders responsible. Other officials promised reforms of strict drug laws under which more than 100,000 people are jailed each year.

Abrupt Reversal

The abrupt reversal was a rare victory for Russian civil society and came as support for President Vladimir Putin has fallen amid stagnant incomes and unpopular tax and pension reforms. Putin is scheduled to hold his annual call-in show with Russians on June 20 and the arrest threatened to dominate the discussions.

But analysts warned against reading too much into the move, noting that the harsh police response Wednesday suggested the Kremlin was signalling that there would be no broad easing of pressure on opponents.

“Sadly, after a ’concession’ (i.e., not continuing the frame-up of #Golunov), it was pretty much inevitable the authorities would go hard on today’s protest, fearing that momentum would swing against them,” Mark Galeotti, senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote on Twitter.

Navalny, who’s been detained many times at demonstrations in recent years, was charged with violation of the strict regulations for public events and could face up to 30 days in jail, although he didn’t organize the protest, according to his press secretary. ”They say I organized the unsanctioned march. Unlace your shoes, remove your belt, surrender your phone and get into the cell,” he wrote on Twitter.

To contact the reporter on this story: Evgenia Pismennaya in Moscow at epismennaya@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Gregory L. White at gwhite64@bloomberg.net, Paul Abelsky

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