State-controlled media in Russia proved considerably easier to control than ordinary citizens on March 26. Tens of thousands of Russians joined the anti-corruption protests called by Alexei Navalny, despite the likelihood of arrests and gratuitous violence from OMON riot police and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s own ‘National guard’ [Rosgvardiya]. Many hundreds were reported detained in Moscow and St Petersburg alone. At least one activist – Dmitry Kiselev – was arrested in Russian-occupied Crimea and is reported to have already been jailed for 10 days. All of this, and the arrest of Alexei Navalny, was either muffled by state-controlled television channels or distorted. The lies may work in parts of the country where people have no other source of information, but were especially absurd given the amount of video footage posted on social networks and Twitter and the breaking news headlines in the international press. In Samara, those detained included any protesters streaming the events onto the Internet. The person who announced the planned protest, Sergei Ryzhov, has totally disappeared after being taken away by police.
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Halya Coynash: Russian state TV in absurd denial over thousand-strong protests, mass arrests
Opposition supporters take part in an unauthorised anti-corruption rally in central Moscow on March 26, 2017.Thousands of Russians protested on March 26 across the country to protest corruption, in rallies called by opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Navalny called the demonstrations after publishing a detailed report this month accusing Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev of controlling a property empire through a shadowy network of non-profit organisations. / AFP PHOTO / Alexander UTKIN
