• Russian police raid opposition leaders' homes ahead of anti-Putin rally

    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.

    By msnbc.com staff and news services

    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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  • Protests pit Russian blogger against Putin

    Tens of thousands of Russians are protesting alleged voter fraud after parliamentary elections, and President Vladimir Putin is their main target. NBC's Stephanie Gosk reports.

    By Reuters

    MOSCOW - If Vladimir Putin is to face a Russian rebellion, its spiritual leader may be a 35-year-old blogger named Alexei Navalny.

    Alexey Sazonov / AFP - Getty Images

    Alexei Navalny takes part in an opposition rally in central Moscow on Dec. 5.

    At Saturday's protests, the biggest of Putin's 12-year rule, some of the loudest cheers were for the anti-corruption campaigner, who has warned Russia's paramount leader he could face an Arab Spring-style revolt.

    Though he was absent from the rallies, sitting in jail since a protest last week against vote-rigging in the December 4 parliamentary election, Navalny is in the vanguard of a mood change among Russia's urban youth against Putin's rule.

    "You cannot beat up and arrest hundreds of thousands or millions," Navalny said in a statement from jail that was read out to demonstrators on Saturday. "We are not cattle or slaves.

    "We have a voice and we have the strength to defend it."

    The message, issued while he serves out a 15-day sentence for obstructing police during a demonstration, was also posted on his blog.

    Navalny represents a new, Internet-savvy generation and is seen as a potential threat to Putin, even though the prime minister and former KGB spy runs a tightly controlled political system that he has crafted since his rise to power in 1999.

    Asked about his own ambitions during an interview with Reuters in May, Navalny winced but his blue eyes twinkled: "I would like to be president," he said.

    "But there are no elections in Russia."

    With a courage that some would say borders on folly, Navalny dismissed the dangers of challenging Putin: "That's the difference between me and you: you are afraid and I am not afraid," he said.

    "I realize there is danger, but why should I be afraid?"

    He has no political party but Navalny has become possibly Russia's most popular political blogger by using his computer keyboard to illustrate the absurdities of a corrupt bureaucracy.

    Yet his character and politics are also more complex - some might call them contradictory - than admiring Western liberals might expect of a Yale-educated lawyer who has taken to buying small stakes in some of Russia's biggest companies in order to demand greater transparency for shareholders, and the public.

    While his time in the United States on a fellowship at Yale has forced him into denying accusations from Putin supporters that he is a CIA plant, his hostile views on Muslim and Asian migration into Russia's Slavic heartland have also seen him obliged to rebuff suggestions that he has "fascist" tendencies.

    An outspoken Russian nationalist, he was expelled from a liberal opposition party and promises to crack down on immigration from Central Asia and the Caucasus.

    His role, never fully explained, in a brawl, and alleged air pistol shooting, in 2007, adds to an edgy air of mystery around the tall, lean attorney who sets off chiseled Slavic cheekbones and piercing blue eyes with a marked taste for argyle-pattern sweaters and jeans.

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