Moscow and most Russian regions saw a series of huge rallies at the end of January and early February, in which protesters demanded the immediate release of Russian dissident and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. Remarkably, on January 23, a crowd of several hundred pro-Navalny demonstrators even gathered in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol (illegally annexed, along with the peninsula, from Ukraine in 2014) (Spektr, January 23).

Read more here.