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Maxim Shipenkov / EPA
Masked investigators carry confiscated documents and equipment from the apartment building in which opposition leader Alexei Navalny resides after they finished a raid of his flat in Moscow.
Russian police raided opposition leaders' homes on Monday and summoned them for questioning, disrupting plans for a protest against President Vladimir Putin and suggesting he has lost patience with unrest.
The early morning searches ahead of Tuesday's planned rally were an aggressive turn after months of opposition demonstrations, signaling a tougher approach to dissent at the start of the former KGB spy's new six-year term as president.
Several leaders were ordered to appear for questioning on Tuesday about violence at a rally on the eve of Putin's May 7 inauguration, almost certainly stopping them from attending the first big planned protest since he returned to the Kremlin.
Armed police stood guard as investigators searched the apartments of anti-corruption blogger Alexei Navalny, leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov, socialite and TV personality Ksenia Sobchak and other opposition figures, rifling through rooms and seizing computer drives and discs, photographs and cash.
"They practically cut out the door," Navalny, one organizer of a wave of protests sparked by allegations of fraud in a December parliamentary election won by Putin's United Russia party, said on Twitter. He tweeted that police had confiscated electronics "including discs with the children's photos."
Family members were also targeted by investigators, who searched the homes of Udaltsov's parents and Navalny's in-laws, among others, The Moscow Times reported.
After tolerating the biggest opposition protests of his 12-year rule while seeking election, Putin now looks intent on damping down unrest.
Denis Sinyakov / Reuters
Russian security forces stand guard as an opposition supporter and Anna Veduta, spokeswoman for anti-corruption blogger and opposition activist Alexei Navalny, wait outside the entrance to the apartment block where Navalny lives in Moscow.
On Friday he signed a law that increased fines, in some cases more than 100-fold, for violations of public order at gatherings including street demonstrations, ignoring warnings from his human rights council that it was unconstitutional.
The Investigative Committee, Russia's main investigation agency, said officers had seized "a large quantity of propaganda material and literature with anti-state slogans, electronic databases and computers containing information relevant to the criminal case" opened over violence at the May 6 protest.
At least 1 million euros worth of cash stuffed in dozens of envelopes were also seized in Sobchak’s apartment, The Moscow Times reported.
Investigators vowed to determine the source and purpose for the money.
“My yearly income is more than 2 million. Don't I have the right to keep it at home if I don't trust banks?” Sobchak wrote on Twitter, according to The Moscow Times.
Russia's presidential election takes place on Sunday, Mar. 4. Rock Center Correspondent Harry Smith journeyed to Moscow where he met blogger Alexei Navalny, a vocal opponent of Vladimir Putin and his party United Russia. Navalny has galvanized protesters through social media and uses his website to expose alleged political corruption. The prospect of Putin returning to the presidency has generated protests in Russia not seen since the fall of Communism. The surging public outrage has left some wondering if a movement is afoot in Russia similar to that of last year's Arab Spring.
"What we are witnessing today is in essence the year 1937," opposition activist Yevgenia Chirikova said at an emergency meeting in a cramped office to discuss the protest on Tuesday, in reference to the deadliest year of dictator Josef Stalin's repression.
Investigators said the searches were lawful, as part of a probe into a criminal case against activists accused of attacking riot police at a May 6 rally.
Tuesday's "March of Millions” is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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It's a good thing the extreme righties can only wish this would happen in the US, considering how much they hate the whole Occupy movement.
oops
Get the real facts on Russia and its upcoming role in the world. In the Plot to Overthrow Mohammad Goldstein bluntly tells the world about the Inside truth of the USG, Russia and China. This is filled with a lot of information Obama has a copy and you can get it for nothing on the net. Wait until you find out how the USG uses the media to manipulate your opinion. This will slap the silly politics out of you.
theres a conspiracy behind every tree
i only put this here cause i want people to look up what im saying and see for your self the truth.
wow, wtf? i never thought i would see the world the way it is but here it is anyway in my life time. America spying on its own people now. Dont really think alot of people understand whats going on but go back to the start, which is sept 10, 2001, not the 11th. on the 10th rumfields was brought before a comettee to acount for 2.3 trilion dollars and guess what happened the next day, the exact spot the pentagon kept their money records was hit by a plane that isn't even shown on camera, america you better wake up and do it quick, our government is slowly taking our rights away and we are letting them. Stop listening to the news and research things on your own and you will see i am right. just type in Rumsfield 2.3 trilion dollars and see waht you get the day before 911
Once again, Putin shows just what a thug he is....
Of course they did. That is how a dictatorship is run.
The USSR Russia hasn't changed a bit.
They are hiding under the guise of being Capitalistic and good to their people.
Then why do so many Russians just disappear?--Russia is as secret as China. Allies.
No Hope. Never. Obama tried to make friends with Medvedev---No Change
Vladimir Putin is just Bashar al-Assad in a better cut suit and a white version of Idi Amin.
Give it another 20 years when the remaining communist supporters are too old to keep up with a fast changing world.
Putin is causing his own downfall by holding onto too much control. It's a matter of time before this implodes on the central heads of state.
China will enventually follow.
The Tsar is dead.........meet the new Tsar.
Russia will slip into an area they don't want to go. Stalin was a semiliterate thug. I was hoping Putin was a step up. I have my doubts. It's back to the old concrete commie bunker for Russia.
What Putin needs to realize is that dissent is not always listened to. Sometimes it is worth lending an ear, but if there is too much inflamitory dissent, most people simply stop listening. But if you supress it with armed thugs, suddenly dissent becomes the whispering voice of the masses.
I cannot believe that the year is 1937, in 2012?
True, only stalinist intentions can do it.
Same thing happened in the States a couple of weeks ago....
Stinking russians and stinking chinese have no business what so ever being on the Security Council.
They claim to be civilized, but their actions have proven that they are little more than semi-literate thugs the way they oppress their people and make up laws to prevent their people from doing anything to dissent.
Gee, I hope the U.S. doesn't go that way...
They'll get theirs soon enough though...
No wonder Putin supports Assad of Syria.
That's our boy Putin for you! Joe Stalin Jr. at work!!
a translation of an old French aphorism : "The more things apparently change, the more they essentially remain the same." Seems appropriate; Putin-Stalin-Tsar.
you people are so stupid and ignorent,it makes me sick.none of you see THAT IT IS YOUR OWN HYPOCRICY THAT @!$%#ING FEEDS THE WOLVES! so that theY can in turn steal our thoughts goddamnit! then you all have the audacity to to blindly accuse and point fingers in whichever direction you so CHOOSE! its your choice to belittle a culture to the point that to you all,that YOUR IMPERIALISM CONSUMES YOU....YOU!!
IDIOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Would you care to put that in intelligible English?
(sigh) THE SCARY THING IS...thats the truth though...
SIEG HEIL, Herr Putin. In 6 years, you will not even have to worry about stealing an election, there will be no elections.
I give Russia 1 year before civil war breaks out again in all the previous Russian occupied countries (those not now in NATO) and Russia will step into "Rescue" them.
Damn NAZI....
That's all the world needs is another commie dictator. Never trust a person in government with beady eyes or big ears.
Sorry to say this but the last 2 Presidents in America fit that description.
Anyone surprised? Anyone at all?
Putin is no Stalin. He hasn't the courage. He is more of a showman.
He and Lukashenko, Nazarbaev, Mugabe and Assad have much in common though...
They are all paranoid yet somehow still convinced of their superiority.
This was planned out years before when Putin was in his first term. He was never going to give up power once he took it. The People of the Soviet Union...... oops Russia have watched like the good trained sheep they were trained to be during WW3(the cold war) as they cannot have a government that does not have a dictator at its head, and they have had one in place for over 15 years now. Like many other posts here, I belive we have seen the last attempt at a free election in Russia and this last one was a sham anyway. We will be caught flat-footed though when Russia begins to reclaim former territory that was once part of the Soviet Union. We will bluster and rage at the UN, come up with sanctions and strongly worded statements condemning their actions, but just as with the League of Nations before, they will be powerless to do anything about it. Remember these countries; Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. These will be as infamos as Poland was to WW2, as these will probably be the nations the European Union will go to war over, and where NATO goes so does America. WW5 looks to be the final world war that we will have though, as by that time militaries on both sides will belive that their side will survive the exchange of warheads enough not to take the nuclear option off the table. By then the planet will have already begun to break down under the pressure of 7-8 billion people living off it. It will be the true MAD(mutually assured destruction)ness that we will launch and then point the finger at the other and say he made me do it. I would say start building your shelters, but what kind of shelter can you build when the very planet it is on begins to die?
I agree with much of what you say. In the late nineties I had the almost fatalistic feeling that his sudden appearance in national politics and meteoric rise to power was no coincidence but a carefully orchestrated series of events. It was too smooth, too choreographed.
I also can't help feeling that Putin - the president, not the man himself - is an artifice, a creation by a group of people who actually control things in the Russian government and certainly do not wish to risk losing any of that power to an independent thinker. It would be easy to say it is the FSB (KGB) but they have always seemed to me to be an instrument of the government - a blunt force weapon and not the government itself. It is another group; a smaller group of men who profit from the system and control it to their own benefit.
Since essentially all successful Russian politicians are criminals - the system demands it - I suspect it may actually be organized crime bosses who control everything. Consider this: They don't wish to be seen; they need at least the appearance of a legitimate front and everything is about money and power. In short, rule of authority not rule of law. This scenario of who is actually in charge fits the evidence, I think.
I am not, by nature, a conspiracy theorist but my experience of Russia and Russian politics almost demands that I consider such possibilities.
Putin isn't just a "thug", he's a bonafide murderer among his other fine qualities. He's also one of the richest men in the world with his assets being estimated at up to 70 billion, mostly hidden from public scrutiny. But don't kid yourselves, the Russian people won't tolerate much more of his excesses, particulary his thoroughly ignorant crackdown on the "dissidents" aka protesters. That movement will simply grow in size until Ras-Putin is removed from office forcibly, and perhaps from life. Just another rightwing fascist puke.
Pretty much what you'd expect from Putin, a Stalin wannabe and KGB criminal. He's exactly what Russia doesn't need, a megalomaniac who sees himself as the Great Leader intent on returning Russia to a police state with whatever means necessary, including physical intimidation, violence and assassination. A truly revolting piece of human garbage.
Interesting how one can always find some clown in a uniform willing to abuse the rights of others.