MOSCOW: Supporters of imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny came out to residential courtyards and shined their cell phone flashlights on Sunday in a display of unity, despite efforts by Russian authorities to extinguish the illuminated protests.

Navalny’s team sent photos of small groups with lit-up cell phones in cities from Siberia to the Moscow region. It was unclear how many people participated overall.

No arrests were immediately reported. However, police detained nine people at a daytime demonstration in the city of Kazan calling for the release of political prisoners, according to OVD-Info, a human rights group that monitors political arrests.

The group said security guards at Moscow State University recorded the names of people leaving a dormitory to take part in a flashlight rally there.

When Navalny’s first team urged people to come out to the cellphone protests, many responded with jokes and skepticism. After two weekends of nationwide demonstrations, the new protest format looked to some like a retreat.

Yet Russian officials spent days trying to blacken the protests. Officials accused Navalny’s allies of acting on Nato’s instructions. Kremlin-backed TV channels warned that flashlight rallies were part of major uprisings around the world. State news agencies cited unnamed sources as saying a terrorist group was plotting attacks during unapproved mass protests.

The suppression attempts represent a change of tactics for Russian authorities, who used to ignore Navalny.

Kremlin-controlled TV channels used to not report about protests called by Navalny. Russian President Vladimir Putin has never mentioned his most prominent critic by name. State news agencies referred to the anti-corruption investigator as a blogger in the rare stories when they did mention him.

Navalny went from a person whose name is not allowed to be mentioned to be the main subject of discussion on state TV, said Maria Pevchikh, head of investigations at Navalnys Foundations for Fighting Corruption.

Pevchikh credited Navalny’s latest expose for the sudden surge in attention. His foundation’s two-hour video alleging that a lavish palace on Black Sea was built for Putin through corruption has been watched over 111 million times on YouTube since Jan 19.

The video went up two days after Navalny was arrested upon returning to Russia from Germany, where he spent five months recovering from a nerve-agent poisoning that he blames on the Kremlin. The Russian government denies involvement and claims it has no evidence that Navalny was poisoned.

Change in strategy explained

While the high-profile arrest and the subsequent expose were a double blow to authorities, political analyst and former Kremlin speech writer Abbas Gallyamov says that keeping Navalny and his protests off the airwaves to deprive him of additional publicity no longer makes sense.

The fact that this strategy has changed suggests that the pro-government television audience is somehow receiving information about Navalny’s activities through other channels, recognises him, is interested in his work, and in this sense, keeping the silence doesn’t make any sense, Gallyamov said.

The weekend protests in scores of Russian cities last month over Navalnys detention represented the largest outpouring of popular discontent in years and appeared to have rattled the Kremlin. Police reportedly arrested about 10,000 people, and many demonstrators were beaten, while state media sought to downplay the scale of the protests.

Television channels aired footage of empty squares in cities where protests were announced and claimed that few people showed up. Some reports portrayed police as polite and restrained, claiming officers had helped people with disabilities cross busy streets, handed out face masks and offered demonstrators hot tea.

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2021