Moscow police crack down on dissent on Alexey Navalny’s birthday

Police in Moscow raided a private viewing party on Tuesday evening where invitees had gathered to watch the live broadcast of a memorial concert being held in Berlin in honour of the late Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny’s 48th birthday, independent news outlet SOTA reported.

The youth branch of the Dawn party, founded by would-be presidential candidate Yekaterina Duntsova, had hired a loft for its members to watch the concert, SOTA said, adding that police had arrived and had broken up the event after receiving a complaint from the pro-government, radical Russian nationalist movement SERB.

Human rights nonprofit OVD-Info said that the police detained some 30 people, searched their belongings and checked their documents. All were subsequently released.

Elsewhere in the city, riot police reportedly detained and beat a city resident who had taken a sign saying “Putin belongs in prison” to central Moscow’s Solovetsky Stone, a 1990s monument to the victims of Soviet political repression, OVD-Info reported.

Vladislav Malakhov said that he was apprehended by police officers and then kicked, beaten and threatened with mobilisation to the frontline in Ukraine before being forced to record a video message saying he had no complaint against the riot police.

An ambulance was subsequently called to treat Malakhov for suspected concussion, according to OVD-Info. He was subsequently charged with disobeying the security forces and violating the rules for a public event, the organisation added.

The police crackdown came on the day Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, and former Navalny associates including Kira Yarmysh and Leonid Volkov, attended a memorial service at Berlin’s Marienkirche to mark what would have been the late opposition politician’s 48th birthday.