Team Navalny announces more protests planned for Sunday, January 31

Following last Saturday’s countrywide protests in support of jailed opposition figure Alexey Navalny, the head of his Moscow headquarters, Leonid Volkov, has announced more rallies planned for this upcoming Sunday.

Volkov made the announcement on Twitter on Monday, January 25, calling for rallies in “all of Russia’s cities” starting at noon on January 31.

In a follow up tweet, Volkov explained that there is still reason to keep on protesting, recalling that Navalny is set to appear in court on Tuesday, February 2. “The closer to the court, the more powerful our demand will sound,” he wrote, adding that there is also a planned rally in Moscow on the day of Navalny’s hearing.

Finally, Volkov promised to create a “Russian Nexta,” referring to the popular Belarusian opposition Telegram channel Nexta Live, which has played a key role in the protests against President Alexander Lukashenko (Alyaksandr Lukashenka) ongoing since August 2020.

Demonstrations protesting the detention of Alexey Navalny upon his return to Moscow from Germany took place in various cities across Russia on January 23. The protests were not authorized by the authorities and law enforcement officials carried out a record number of arrests. As of 3:00 p.m. Moscow time on January 25, the monitoring group OVD-Info was reporting that there had been more than 3,700 arrests countrywide. Russian officials have also launched a number of criminal cases in connection with the unauthorized demonstrations.