Russian exiled opposition to stage major anti-war protest

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2024-11-18T06:21:04+05:00 NEWS WIRE

BERLIN  -  The Russian opposition, forced into exile and weakened by internal conflicts, will orga­nise its first major demon­stration against Moscow’s Ukraine invasion in Berlin on Sunday, testing its po­litical credibility in the third year of the war. The Kremlin has in recent years eradicat­ed any political competition at home and waged a mas­sive crackdown on dissent, with hundreds -- possibly thousands -- of Russians in prison for their political views. With Vladimir Putin in power for almost 25 years, all of his political opponents are now dead, in prison or in exile. The Russian opposi­tion lost its main figurehead in February, when Putin’s ri­val Alexei Navalny died in an Arctic prison in mysterious circumstances. Yulia Naval­naya, his widow who took the helm of the movement, is one of the main organis­ers of the march. Unable to operate at home, the oppo­sition is forced to relaunch abroad, where hundreds of thousands of Russians fled in the aftermath of the Feb­ruary 2022 invasion. Berlin -- home to thousands of an­ti-Putin Russians and Ukrai­nian refugees -- was chosen as the prime location for the march. The protest is due to kick off at 1300 GMT in the German capital’s centre and will end outside the Russian embassy. Navalnaya is join­ing forces with two other oppositionists for the rally: former Moscow city council­lor and longtime anti-Putin campaigner Ilya Yashin and Vladimir Kara-Murza, who survived two poisoning at­tempts. Both Yashin and Ka­ra-Murza were freed from prison -- where they served sentences for denouncing the Ukraine invasion -- af­ter a prisoner swap with the West this summer. “The march aims to unite every­one who stands against Vladimir Putin’s aggressive war in Ukraine and political repressions in Russia,” or­ganisers said in a statement.

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