‘We are the power here’

Photographer Evgeny Feldman’s snapshots from Moscow’s Navalny solidarity protests

Moscow’s protest in support of jailed opposition politician Alexey Navalny was supposed to take place near the Kremlin, on Manezhnaya Square. But on the morning of April 21, the security forces cut off access to the area. Shortly before the start of the rally, the organizers suggested that the protesters move in two columns coming from Pushkin Square and the Arbat. The two groups met at the top of Tverskaya Street; they were never allowed onto Manezhnaya Square. The Moscow rally was unusually peaceful; at the time of this writing the arrest count was only around 30 people (for comparison, St. Petersburg saw more than 800 detentions). According to police officials, 4,500 protesters took to the streets in the Russian capital (though the protest organizers have suggested multiplying this figure “by ten”). Photographer Evgeny Feldman was on the ground in downtown Moscow capturing the day’s events — here’s what he saw.

Photographs by Evgeny Feldman