Top Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny appeared in court on Monday after he and more than 1,000 other people were arrested at an anti-corruption protest in Moscow. A haggard-looking Navalny arrived at a Moscow district court in a police van, posting on Twitter a selfie taken in the courtroom. Protests swept Russia on Sunday after a report was published accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of controlling a property empire through a murky network of nonprofit organisations (Olga Maltseva / AFP). Despite the large scale of the protests, Russian state television news did not cover them, broadcasting soap operas and nature films instead. The Russian constitution allows public gatherings, but recent laws have criminalised protests unauthorised by city authorities, which frequently refuse to grant permission for rallies by Kremlin critics.

Source: Egypt Independent March 27, 2017 11:48 UTC