And Over To You, Comrade Capitalist Putin ...

"The Kremlin's mistake was to underestimate Navalny's level of support," 

:[When people saw Navalny's arrest on live TV on his return to Russia on Jan. 17, as well as the online release last week of a documentary about President Putin's alleged corruption], it provided a strong emotional impulse to take to the street."

Russian political observer Andrei Kolesnikov, fellow, Moscow's Carnegie Center  

A still image taken from video footage shows law enforcement officers speaking with Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny before leading him away at Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on Jan. 17. (Reuters)

"I am sick of this government of thieves."

"This is a police state that gives nothing to the people. [Putin] builds palaces for himself."

"What is this?" 

68-year-old pensioner Galina Zolina, Moscow

 

"[The protests are] not a knockout blow to the state. We shouldn't start moving into hyperbole, that this is the beginning of the end of Putinism."

"[It's a] coalition of the fed-up. People have all kinds of reasons to feel unhappy with the way things are going and [Navalny] kind of becomes the catalyst."

"It's hard to maintain the momentum [of the protests] week after week."

"One way or another, the state wants to slowly de-legitimize the protests and make them less appealing, and by outlasting them, make opposition look increasingly pointless." 

Mark Galeotti, London-based Russia analyst, host, podcast In Moscow's Shadows

Russian President Vladimir Putin does a video conference call with university students at a state residence in Zavidovo, Russia, on Monday. (Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin via Reuters)

"Hypocrites continue to inflate the fake Navalny case to interfere into internal affairs of our country."

"This is a professionally prepared provocation, encouraged by embassies of Western countries."

Russian embassy, U.K., Twitter

 

"That's what terrorists do. They put women and children in front of themselves [accusing demonstrators of placing children at the fore of the protests]." 

"Nothing that is listed there [Black Sea palatial palace] as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did."

Russian President Vladimir Putin 

Law enforcement officers stand in front of participants during a rally in support of Navalny in St. Petersburg on Saturday. (REUTERS)

According to Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking to university students through a video conference addressing the unrest of unprecedented numbers of protesters in Russian cities, the mass anti-Kremlin protest organizers are "terrorists", and there is no need to investigate -- as Alexei Navalny, returned from Germany to Russia demands -- the president's personal wealth. An issue that is the stuff of urban legends, a conspiracy theory launched by those opposed to Mr. Putin's continued rule, the best president that Russia has ever had and as far as Mr. Putin is concerned, to be the longest-governing.

The issue of a Black Sea palace supposedly owned by Vladimir Putin is nothing but slander, according to the man himself, one that first emerged years ago, and now reborn to slur his reputation. Reputed to have cost a billion dollars and described as "Putin's Palace", the deed to the immense mansion may or may not be in Mr. Putin's strong-box possession, but state funds were apparently diverted in a scheme by his loyal allies to invest him with a palace worthy of his stature, held in trust perhaps for his eventual public ownership.

In 2010, Kolesnikov claimed that a luxurious estate near the Black Sea was for Putin. A Russian website published pictures, including the one above, which it said were of the mansion. The Kremlin denied Putin had anything to do with the building. Reuters is unable to independently verify the authenticity, content, location, source or date of this photograph.

 

Tens of thousands of Russian demonstrators took to the streets on Saturday protesting against the arrest of Alexei Navalny who was determined to return to Russia after  his convalescence in Berlin, recovering from an attempted assassination with the use of the Russian military chemical nerve-agent, Novichok which failed to fatally poison its target. The second time the poison was used for a similar purpose; the first occasion in London targeting another Russian dissident who also recovered as did his daughter, poisoned by default.

For the most part, state-ordered assassinations -- of journalist-critics, political critics, oligarch critics, and any high-profile pests who feel it their right to criticize the Kremlin and Russia's president can be certain that one way or another an attempt will be made on silencing them -- are proven to be successful, whether by drive-by shootings, sharpshooters, poisoning or mysterious disappearances. This was the ultimate challenge by Navalny, to return to Russia and dare the Kremlin/Putin to take additional action.

GRAND DESIGNS: One of the pictures described by a Russian website as showing the mansion dubbed “Putin’s palace.” The Kremlin has denied Putin has anything to do with the building. Reuters

 

Which they speedily did, and Putin's current most-prominent and popular figure of opposition complicating his life now faces trumped-up charges that in a Russian court, may earn him ten years in prison from his current pretrial detention. New mass demonstrations in protest of Mr. Navalny's arrest are scheduled for the coming weekend, similar to Saturday's protest where over 3,000 people were detained. There were relatively restrained clashes by protesters against baton-wielding police with no serious injuries reported.

 

Mr. Putin had in his address to the students on Monday, referred to authorities' claims the opposition had persuaded minors to become part of the rallies, remarking that young people had no place in such situations, nor should they be manipulated for the opposition's political ends. As a master manipulator speaking to young people, the president obviously knows whereof he speaks. An investigation into the claims failed to turn up evidence of the presence of young people in the chanting, determined protest crowd.

 

Mr. Navalny and his political group opposing ongoing rule by Mr. Putin, brought even wider global and internal focus to the situation when they released a video just hours after Mr. Navalny's arrest, pointedly accusing the president of amassing wealth for himself, draining the country's treasury. The immense, sprawling Black Sea mansion was highlighted as an opulent manifestation of the grandiloquent role Mr. Putin sees for himself as a modern-day Czar of the Russian Federation.  

 

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell is set to visit Moscow in the coming month to impress on the Kremlin that by arresting and imprisoning the opposition leader, Russia resembles nothing less than a dictatorship, and to urge the Russian authorities to reconsider this action in light of the harm they do themselves on the international stage. An EU meeting of European foreign ministers had reached the conclusion that a friendly visit and friendly advice to Russia might turn the situation around.

"The council considered it completely unacceptable and condemned mass detentions and police brutality over the weekend."

"We call on Russia for the release of Mr. Navalny."

Joseph Borrell, EU Foreign Policy Chief 

Riot police drag away a protester in Moscow on Saturday. More than 1,400 people were arrested in the capital alone, with 3,700 arrests reported nationwide. (Corinne Seminoff/CBC)