Russian police have stepped up investigations and searches of detained opponent Alexei Navalny and his relatives

Russian police have stepped up investigations and searches targeting detained opponent Alexei Navalny and his relatives, his team said on Wednesday, a few days before further rallies against the government.

“We do not let my lawyer come, we broke my door,” shouted to the press from her window Yulia Navalnaïa, the wife of the opponent, whose Moscow apartment was raided by police Wednesday.

A search also took place of the offices of the opponent’s organization, the Anti-Corruption Fund, said Lioubov Sobol, a relative on Twitter. According to the director of this organization, Ivan Zhdanov, two other police raids targeted an apartment of the opponent where his brother Oleg was and the apartment of Alexey Navalny’s spokesperson, Kira Iarmych, sentenced last Friday to nine days in prison.

According to the same source, these raids took place as part of an investigation for violation of “health standards” in force because of the epidemic of new coronavirus, after the demonstrations Saturday in Russia at the call of the opponent.

“Organizers and participants in unauthorized protests were found to have created a threat of the spread of the novel coronavirus,” the Interior Ministry said before the searches, saying infected people demonstrated in Moscow.

From Berlin to Washington, the Cold War has resurfaced in rhetoric if not deed, with Westerners denouncing a Russian “authoritarian drift” and waving the specter of further sanctions against Moscow.

A Russian court ruled on Thursday to detain opponent Alexei Navalny, imprisoned since his return to Russia on January 17, three days after further anti-power protests are planned across the country.

“The decision on the extension of the period of detention until February 15 remains unchanged,” said Judge Musa Musayev of the Krasnogorsk court near Moscow, according to AFP.

However, the master of the Kremlin is not giving up. Alexeï Navalny has been in prison since his return to Russia on January 17 after five months of convalescence in Germany following an alleged poisoning for which he attributes the responsibility to Vladimir Putin.

Alexei Navalny, who was attending the hearing by videoconference from his detention center, denounced a “demonstrative violation of the law”, an “arbitrary” intended to “intimidate” him and “intimidate everyone”.
“The judges here are just obedient slaves to those people who have stolen our country, who have stolen from us for 20 years and who want to silence people like me,” he said.

Her lawyer Olga Mikhailova told reporters that she would appeal the decision, saying she was “without any particular hope”.
She considered that these legal proceedings were aimed at “excluding her client from the political life of the country”.
Anti-corruption activist and sworn enemy of the Kremlin, Alexei Navalny has been the target of multiple court cases since returning to Russia on January 17 after months of convalescence in Germany for suspected poisoning for which he accuses President Vladimir Putin of being responsible.
According to his lawyer, the opponent faces in particular “about two and a half years” in prison for violating the terms of a suspended sentence of three and a half years imposed in 2014.
Several of his relatives, including his brother Oleg and his ally Lioubov Sobol, were detained for 48 hours on Thursday for “violation of health standards” during unauthorized demonstrations last Saturday.

Demonstrations calling for his release are severely repressed. And all Western requests for clarification on the circumstances of his poisoning – by a Novichok-type nerve agent, according to several European laboratories – remain unheeded.

So what can Westerners hope for in this umpteenth showdown with Vladimir Putin, after the one over Ukraine or the Skripal affair, a former Russian agent poisoned by the same Novichok in the United Kingdom? Almost nothing, according to experts.

They intend to “make Russia and Putin pay a price in terms of reputation,” said François Heisbourg, special advisor at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) in London and the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) in Paris.

“I am struck by how much one man, Navalny, seems to worry, even frighten the Russian government,” new US Secretary of State Antony Blinken responded in Washington. “We are deeply concerned for the safety of Navalny”, he added, considering that he was the spokesperson “of many, many, many Russians, and we should listen to him rather than muzzle him” .

If he says he is “very worried” about the situation in Russia, the new American president Joe Biden also underlines the “mutual interest” of Moscow and Washington to work on files like the New Start treaty of nuclear disarmament.

Investigations into last Saturday’s protests are mounting as supporters of corruption slayer and Kremlin nemesis Alexei Navalny announced new rallies on Sunday.
The Russian Investigation Committee, in charge of priority investigations, announced on Wednesday that around twenty investigations had been opened in connection with the demonstrations, in particular for calls for disturbances, hooliganism, violence against the police officers or for incitement of minors to commit illegal acts.

In the end, the Europeans will send their diplomacy representative Josep Borrell to Moscow in early February to “send a clear message” on human rights, with possible new sanctions against Russian personalities or companies.

His French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, who in 2019 initiated a relaunch of strategic dialogue with Moscow, without great results for the time being, makes the same calculation.
Paris has admittedly postponed indefinitely the joint meeting of foreign affairs and defense ministers scheduled for September 2020 because of the Navalny affair. However, “this cooling did not lead to cutting ties,” said a ministerial source.

As for Germany, on the front line in the Navalny affair, it intends to complete the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline with Russia despite pressure from Washington, which is hostile to the project.
“The government rightly criticizes the poisoning and arbitrary arrest of the (number one) opponent of the Kremlin […] But it is trying to put the pipeline in a parallel reality, the opposite of what is happening in Russia of Vladimir Poutine ”, noted on January 26 the German daily newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung.

Not what to change the situation, believes Fyodor Loukianov, editor-in-chief of the magazine Russia in Global Affairs in Moscow.
“Sanctions are nasty, but not new. In addition, it pushes Russia to look for economic, technological alternatives, “he told AFP.
“If this pressure continues, it won’t work. It will only anchor the conviction that the West wants to hamper Russia and that everything must be done to retaliate without fail, “he opposes.

In a statement, the branch of the Interior Ministry in the Russian capital said “attempts” at unauthorized gatherings and “all provocations” will be “stopped immediately”.

She has also threatened those who respond to the calls with legal action.
In a similar warning, Moscow region police also asked parents to make sure their minor children do not participate in protests.

“Even being at an unauthorized rally or parade can be considered a violation of the law,” the source said.

Opponent Alexei Navalny’s team called on Russians to demonstrate across the country on Sunday, after initial rallies last weekend that resulted in more than 4,000 arrests.

At the same time, around 20 criminal charges were laid, including calls for disturbance, hooliganism, violence against the police and inciting minors to commit illegal acts.

In Moscow, seven such investigations were opened, authorities said Thursday. At least 110 people were also given short sentences for administrative violations.

Navalny himself has been the target of multiple court cases since his return to and imprisonment in Russia on January 17 after months of recovery in Germany for suspected poisoning for which he accuses President Vladimir Putin of being responsible.

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