Earlier today, Russian police detained Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he appeared at a rally in Moscow to urge people to boycott the March elections that autocratic Russian thug Vladimir Putin is expected to win. Putin has held power for 18 years. The crowd of several hundred had been shouting anti-Putin slogans, including "Putin is a thief," before police broke up what they claimed was an "illegal" protest. Navalny had just arrived in Pushkin Square when he was jumped by uniformed police, who forced him to the pavement before hauling him off in a police vehicle.
At the same time as the Moscow protests, several hundred people protested in cities across Russia, with some 180 protesters detained by police. Putin is fearful of a recurrence of last year's protests:
"Navalny emerged as a threat to the Kremlin’s tight grip on power on June 12 last year, when thousands of his followers defied police prohibitions to protest in cities across Russia. The scale of the protests, some of the biggest in six years, took the Kremlin by surprise."Putin clearly doesn't want to be surprised in the March elections. This is what an America under an unfettered demagogue and autocrat like Donald "Rump" Trump would look like. It's no surprise that Rump admires Putin as a "strong" leader, unbound by messy things like the rule of law and democracy. It's no surprise, either, that he wanted to jail Secretary Clinton if elected. It's what dictators like his role model "leader" Putin do.
(photo: Putin in the good old days)
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