Over 3,500 people have been detained during rallies across Russia in protest at high-level corruption and the arrest of opposition activist Alexei Navalny. Navalny was arrested on arrival at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport on January 17 as he flew in after recovering from being poisoned late last year by the novichok nerve agent.
Navalny is being held in Matrosskaya Tishina, Moscow’s most dreaded jail, charged with violating the parole terms of a suspended sentence for embezzlement. If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to ten years in prison. Navalny has called these charges trumped up, but his recent revelations about Putin’s lavish palace on the shores of the Black Sea won’t have endeared him to the Russian president. Said to feature a helipad, an underground ice palace, a church, a mudroom, a two-floor theatre, several vineyards and a tunnel to provide access to the beach, the home is reported to have cost US$1.35 billion (£988 million).