Moscow:
Russian police on Wednesday searched the Saint Petersburg offices of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and detained his prime aide Lyubov Sobol and spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh, his allies mentioned, ahead of nationwide protests in his assistance.
The morning police raids came ahead of protests planned in more than one hundred cities across Russia on Wednesday evening in assistance of the hunger-striking Navalny, who is protesting his lack of healthcare therapy in prison.
“Searches were carried out from the very morning,” his group in Saint Petersburg mentioned on Twitter.
“They have already come for the office’s cameraman, several volunteers and activists.”
Sobol’s lawyer Vladimir Voronin mentioned on Twitter that police had pulled her out of a taxi.
“According to her, she was detained by many uniformed officers,” he wrote.
He later mentioned she was taken to a police station but was getting kept in a police wagon.
Yarmysh retweeted her lawyer saying that she was “just detained at the entrance of her building”.
The independent monitor OVD-Info mentioned Wednesday that police had carried out searches and detained activists in at least 20 cities across the nation.
The police raids also come ahead of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s annual state of the nation address, which he is set to provide at 12:00 (0900 GMT).
Police have issued warnings against joining Wednesday’s rallies in assistance of Navalny, saying they are illegal gatherings.
More than 10,000 individuals have been detained for the duration of demonstrations in assistance of the Kremlin critic in late January and early February.
The opposition figure was arrested on arrival to Russia in January from Germany, exactly where he had spent months recovering from close to fatal nerve toxin poisoning.
He is serving two-and-a-half years in a penal colony for violating parole terms on old fraud charges he says are politically motivated.
()