The stage is set for another Navalny-police showdown

The Moscow district attorney’s office has reportedly “warned” the opposition activists Alexey Navalny and Lyubov Sobol against staging an unpermitted anti-Putin protest on May 5.

Over the weekend, negotiations between Navalny and City Hall broke down, when the mayor’s office refused to offer the activist a central location for his demonstration against Vladimir Putin’s next presidential term. Moscow officials said they would sanction a protest at Sakharov Prospekt, but Navalny insists on marching his supporters down Tverskaya Street to Manege Square, just outside the Kremlin.

Navalny’s supporters in Kostroma are encountering similar problems. Alexander Zykov, one of the activists organizing a local May 5 protest against Putin, was jailed for 15 days on May 1 for failing to perform mandated community service. The judge reportedly ignored a medical document temporarily excusing Zykov from the work.

• In 2012, a day before Putin’s last inauguration, several thousand people protested in Moscow against Putin’s return to the Kremlin. More than 30 demonstrators were later convicted of inciting or inflicting violence on police officers in a controversial campaign known as the “Bolotnaya Square Case.”