From RFE/RL's Russian Service:
Declaring the need to build a country where people are respected and live “without fear,” and where the state “finally deals with problems of its own country,” Grigory Yavlinsky, co-founder of the Yabloko party, handed over 105,000 signatures to the Central Election Commission for registration as a candidate in Russia’s March 2018 presidential elections.
Amusing fake ballot asks whether people are not against Putin being president again. Responses are "yes, I'm not against it" and "no, I'm not against it."
- By Carl Schreck
Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny says Russian authorities are deliberately dragging out an administrative case against him linked to nationwide protests he organized over the weekend so that he'll be in jail when the Russian presidential election is held.
Navalny was arrested in Moscow on his way to the January 28 protest in Moscow but was later released pending a court hearing. He says he's been charged with repeatedly violating Russian laws on public demonstrations -- an administrative offense punishable by up to 30 days in prison.
Navalny said on his website on January 31 that authorities opted not to try his case immediately because if he'd served a 30-day jail term right away, he'd be released weeks before the March 18 election.
"And Putin wants me to be sidelined directly before elections, and preferably during the elections," Navalny wrote. "So I presume that I'll be jailed with the intent of making sure I'm in a cell on March 18."
Navalny, who has spearheaded several nationwide anticorruption protests, is calling on Russian voters to boycott the election. He was barred from running due to a financial-crimes conviction he calls fabricated and politically motivated.
Komsomolskaya Pravda is reporting that Ksenia Sobchak has officially submitted the 100,000 signatures needed to run in Russia's presidential election. She told reporters that people from more than 50 regions had signed her petition to run.
'Fear Of A...Rash Step'?
Police, particularly in Moscow, appeared unusually restrained at the January 28 boycott rallies -- possibly giving an insight into thinking in the Kremlin as the election approaches. Over 1,000 detentions were made in the capital at a rally in March, compared to 16 on Sunday.
Speaking on a weekly current affairs show on Ekho Moskvy on January 29, Russian political expert Nikolai Petrov said this suggests the authorities are being careful not to create lines of tension or to anger protesters in the runup to the election. “It seems to me it is entirely evident that the change is linked to the approach of the elections. And the fear of the authorities to take a rash step that might provoke action from the other side.”
Here's video of the police in the office of Navalny's Anticorruption Foundation, interrupting their coverage of the boycott protests and taking them off the Internet.
An FB post by Ekho Moskvy editor Aleksei Venediktov argues that candidate Sobchak's trip to Grozny proves her campaign is a Putin project.
"The opportunity with a guarantee of comfort and security to fly into the realm of Ramzan Kadyrov and hold a campaign show in order to pick up some points on the moral plane is tasteless vulgarity, in my view -- extraordinary even by our standards."
Photo of Putin making a campaign visit to a maternity hospital, via independent journalist Oleg Kashin's on Facebook. That's a mannequin down there "giving birth."
Yavlinsky going to the voters with a new (Lenin-inspired?) look. His campaign will file its signatures with the Central Election Commission tomorrow.