Naval’ny supporters at court. The patriarch condemns the young

Today the judges decide the fate of the blogger, in prison on contradictory charges. Almost 10 thousand arrested in demonstrations in 18 regions across the country. The cruel violence of the police, portrayed as the "victims". For Kirill, young people are under "negative influences" from the internet. Ilarion: Naval'nyj like Lenin: sick with ideology, he comes from Germany, supported by the West.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - At 10 am today the Simonovsky court in Moscow is meeting to decide the fate of Alexei Naval’ny. His supporters have decided to gather in front of the court to support their leader, as communicated by the Naval’nyj headquarters via social media.

The message sent was: “Are you ready to surrender? Are you ready to give in and let Putin do whatever he wants? The gatherings of 23 and 31 January tell us no. Because you are the bravest people in our country. on February 2 they will issue the sentence on Alexei Naval’nyj, to lock him in prison for several years on an artfully fabricated charge, that of Yves Rocher. We all know that it is only a revenge, because Naval’nyj dared not to die, and he returned to fight against Putin.”

Navalnyj is accused of not having submitted to the checks requested by the investigators during 2020, and the fact that he had been poisoned and subjected to rehabilitation, for the court, "is not a sufficient reason not to appear for the appeal".

Meanwhile, the criminal cases filed against the demonstrators on January 23 and 31 combined 40 different charges under various articles of the code, to avoid recognizing the arrested as part of a single movement. Those arrested are in prisons in 18 regions throughout Russia; 4000 people on the 23rd and over 5000 on the 31st, of which 1600 in Moscow alone.

The many videos of the January 31 parades released on the web recall the similar testimonies of the Belarusian rallies last year. Absolutely peaceful people dragged across the asphalt, beaten on the limbs with truncheons, hit with tazors until complete loss of consciousness, randomly snatched from the group and thrown onto the ground face down into the mud. The state media spoke of aggressive "provocateurs" among the demonstrators, who launched themselves against the "defenceless" Omon, provoking with these statements an increasingly evident "Lukashenko effect" on the figure of Putin himself.

From his isolation dacha in Peredelkino Moscow, Patriarch Kirill (Gundjaev) issued a statement to Tas on January 31. In his opinion, “there is a problem of negative external influence on our youth… Not infrequently our young people literally lose their minds, losing all direction in life. We must counter this influence with correct thoughts, with right convictions, which can act as an effective brake to any destructive influence”.

The negative influences, according to Kirill, come from television and the internet: "If we want to ensure a bright future for our homeland, it is necessary to control the flow of information, which today overwhelms contemporary man, and to verify what ideals are carried by this flow".

Metropolitan Ilarion (Alfeev) also complained about the "involvement of children and adolescents in political actions, what constitutes an inadmissible violation of the civil legislative order, and I think that the guilty will have to take responsibility" - said Ilarion in a 'interview on Rossija-24 channel. The metropolitan however admitted that there are serious social problems, starting from the high level of corruption in "some" state structures, and compared the current situation to the riots of 1917, before the October revolution, when it appeared continuously " all kinds of propagandists, some inside the country, others were abroad, in quiet Switzerland, from which they organized the riots in Russia, and from there Lenin returned home to make the revolution, which we know what it led to ”. According to Ilarion, Naval'nyj would be the new Lenin who returns from Germany to destroy Russia, supported by Western sponsors. The Metropolitan of Pskov, Tikhon (Shevkunov), also recalled the times of the Bolshevik revolution, warning of the consequences that could come from the escalation of protests.

Many wonder if the unrest will continue to escalate, in the manner of Belarus in 2020 (the effects of which are still ongoing), and if the Navalnyi movement will be able to form a real political coalition that in the September elections contests the parliament to the Putinian party "United Russia" and its allies, who in turn could change direction.