What to expect from a protest campaign on Saturday, stopping the market for illegal casinos and the first days of Biden in the White House

The security forces are preparing to harshly disperse the action in support of Navalny, but the mass turnout can become the beginning of big problems for the Kremlin

On Saturday in Moscow, the most massive from the summer of 2019 will be held and, possibly, the most significant protest action since 2011-2012. The authorities all week in different ways intimidated potential participants in the rally, and Alexei Navalny's associates were detained and fined. Political scientists believe in the warnings of the security forces and believe that acceleration will be tough, but if the action turns out to be massive, this can be the beginning of great problems for the authorities.

The situation on the eve

The authorities on the eve of the action acted in two main directions. Firstly, they distributed the warnings as much as possible that the rally would be rigidly dispersed, and the participants and authors of calls for it could become defendants in criminal cases. Secondly, they preventively detained the most active associates of Alexei Navalny and opposition politicians.

• The Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in Moscow published a warning that “attempts to conduct an inconsistent public event, as well as any provocative actions by their participants” will be regarded as a threat to public order and immediately stopped.
• The Prosecutor General’s Office warned that the actions of participants in inconsistent shares can be qualified under Article 212 of the Criminal Code (mass riots). It involves up to 15 years in prison for the organizers of the riots, up to 8 years for participants and up to 2 years for calls. It was under this article that the defendants in the “Swamp case” of 2012 and the “Moscow case” of 2019 were judged. Those of them to whom the convictions were issued received terms from 1 to 3 years.
• On Friday evening, the Investigative Committee announced a criminal case under Article 151.2 of the Criminal Code (“involving minors in the commission of unlawful actions, obviously pose a danger to life”). The representative of the SK explained that the case was instituted against the supporters of Navalny for calls to participate in the action on January 23.
• Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin recorded a video message in which he called the action “unacceptable” and asked Muscovites not to succumb to the calls of provocateurs, motivating this with the danger of coronavirus.
• The “children's topic” remained the main in the rhetoric of the authorities: in all these statements it was said about “cynical attempts by provocateurs” (Sergey Sobyanin) to attract minors to the action. The Ministry of Education called on the parents of schoolchildren not to let them on Saturday for “walks”.
• The leadership of Moscow schools all week distributed among the parents a brochure of the Council of the Parental Committee under the metropolitan department of education, which described the risks for schoolchildren and reminded of the possible deprivation of parental rights for the participation of children in protests. The link to the brochure even spreads in kindergartens-a familiar editor of The Bell, who is raising a 3-year-old son, showed a link to her, sent by the teacher to the kindergarten parental chat.
• In parallel, the police throughout the country detained the calls for the inconsistent campaign of the associates of Alexei Navalny and opposition activists - the Medusa, which is conducting an updated list , counted 43 detainees in 20 cities. The most famous arrested employees of the FBK Navalny - Georgy Alburov (10 days) and Kira Yar (9 days). Lyubol Sobol, detained on the eve of the FBK lawyer, was fined 250 thousand rubles, but released.
• The remaining at large comrades -in -arms of Navalny published his video message from the pre -trial detention center, written, apparently, on January 20 or 21. Navalny thanked the audience of the film about the “Putin Palace” , expressed “respect for schoolchildren” for “chaos in Tiktok”, and also stated that he was not going to “hang on a window grill”. Sources in the Kremlin, meanwhile, told Bloomberg that they plan to leave Navalny in prison for years - by the real term in the old case “Yves Rocher” (up to 3.5 years) they can add a new one, in the case of embezzlement of FBK (up to 10 years).

How many people will be

Of course, neither political scientists nor the organizers themselves can predict this. “This is impossible to predict - we are not“ United Russia ”, we do not give out 100 rubles each participant. But in general, <...> we can hope that these will be enough mass shares, because some new audience for us has caught on, which we have not seen, ” said Leonid Volkov, the head of the Navalny headquarters.

Political scientists interviewed by The Bell allow a massive flow of youth to a protest action, which everyone talked about this week. “The film [about the“ Palace of Putin ”] could play a powerful mobilizing role,” says Ilya Grashchenkov, president of the regional policy development center. The largest inconsistent protests of the last decade took place after the previous main hit Alexei Navalny on YouTube - the film “He is not Dimon for you” about Dmitry Medvedev.

What to expect from security forces

All experts surveyed by The Bell have no doubt that the police will act tough. Before previous large inconsistent shares in support of independent candidates in the Moscow City Duma, the authorities also intimidated potential participants - and the threats were not empty .

Since then, the Russian security forces have had a new role model - Alexander Lukashenko, Alexey Makarkin, deputy director of the Center for Political Technology, told The Bell. “Belarusian protests showed that a power scenario can work. If Lukashenko then retreated, he would lose as a politician and had not been in power for a long time. And with the help of strength, he was able to linger. Viktor Yanukovych, who tried to find a compromise, eventually lost everything. The Russian authorities learned these lessons, ”he says.

What will happen next

The rally January 23 is special: Alexey Navalny went to Va-Bank, “on you”, right in Putin, says political scientist Konstantin Kalachev. “He is trying to destroy the image of the president, and it must be remembered that the legitimacy of the Russian political structure [always] gave votes for Putin,” he explains.

Kalachev believes that the action can be a turning point for Vladimir Putin: “Its rating can begin to fall rapidly - and then he will have two ways: to urgently look for a successor and really update the system or follow in the footsteps of Lukashenko.” If law enforcement officers will delay too hard, in Russia it will cause resistance according to the Belarusian scenario, if people do not touch, the protest can concentrate in the central parts of the cities, Ilya Grashchenkov agrees with it. Detailed expert comments can be read here .

What am I to me?

The authorities were preparing for new protests for a long time - at the end of 2020, the State Duma adopted a whole package of repressive laws, including tightening responsibility for inconsistent rallies. Here we tell you what can now threaten the participants of the action on January 23, what to do if you were detained, whether it is worth putting on the mask and what problems may arise with the fines paid, which the courts will definitely massage the rally participants.

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Signals

What to expect from Joe Biden

This week, Joe Biden, in an atmosphere of increased combat readiness, took office as president of the United States, taking the presidential oath on the steps of the Capitol. His twenty -minute inaugural speech was full of calls for peace and unity, which he called "the only way to the truly United States of America." Apparently, internal problems will become the main priority of his administration. What to wait for Russia?

• First of all, the new administration of the United States firmly intends to extend for five years START-3-the last remaining “big” agreement with Russia on the restriction of strategic nuclear weapons, the heritage of the times of Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. But there will be no more disinfects, and even more so there will be a reboot - Joe Biden will become the first post -Soviet president of the United States to not even declare an attempt to establish relations with Russia.
• Moreover, Bayden already instructed the scitting chief Avril Heinns to provide a full report on Russia's interference in the 2020 elections; about the use of chemical weapons against the Russian politician Alexei Navalny; the appointment of remuneration for the murder of American soldiers in Afghanistan; Kiberataka at the US Federal Department of SolarWinds, of which the United States is accused of Russia. The reports should be prepared within a week, after which the “reaction to Russian aggression” will follow, the official of the new administration told The Washington Post. About what American sanctions are “hanging” over Russia, we talked in detail here .
• Supporters of sanctions and tough dialogue with Moscow will be responsible for international policy and relations with Russia in the new administration. She is clearly not a priority for her, but here is what the candidates for the Biden administration said this week during the hearing in the Senate. Future Secretary of State Anthony Biginen, for example, “strongly condemned” the persecution of Navalny. “It is amazing how Vladimir Putin, apparently, is afraid of this one person. I think this says a lot, ”he said, adding that Navalny represents the opinion of millions of Russians that should be heard. According to him, Russia throws the United States calls on several fronts at once, and this issue will be high on the agenda of the new administration.
• Biden himself was a supporter of the discharge in the late 1970s with the Soviet Union. In August 1979, Bidden at the head of the congressmen group went to Moscow for negotiations with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the USSR Andrei Gromyko on additions to an agreement on restriction of strategic weapons OSV-2. But this experience is unlikely to be relevant now. We talked about the political career of Biden and relations with Russia here .

Exclusive

Dragged

The work of illegal bookmakers and online casinos since mid-January almost stopped, the special correspondent of The Bell Irina Pankratova found out : Russian-speaking players lost the opportunity to bet on any currencies except bitcoins. This happened after the Central Bank at the end of last yearbegan to clean the payments market to illegal casinos and bookmakers. The victims of this struggle have already become QIWI and the Sberbank service "Yumony" (former Yandex.Money "), as well as several small banks that have lost the license. The Central Bank fought payments to illegal online casinos since 2017, but so far the players have never had serious problems. The exciting details of this story on the weekend will be in our technology building (you can subscribe to it here ).

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