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Cross Russian president Vladimir Putin and you’re going to “kick the bucket” – his words, not mine.

Which is why you can’t help admiring the efforts of opposition leader Alexei Navalny to unseat him.

He hasn’t given up, even when after campaigning to get fellow anti-corruption campaigners elected to local councils in Russia, he was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent.

That’s a favourite of Putin’s and was developed by Soviet scientists during the Cold War, with just a tiny amount often enough to result in death.

Putin denies everything, stating casually that, if they’d wanted to poison him, “they would’ve probably finished it”.

This week, in another classic evasive move, he rejected a claim by Navalny that a luxury Black Sea palace belongs to him, reports DW.

“Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did,” Putin said during a video call, in reference to a video that Navalny’s team published last week.

To access English subtitles in the full video below, in which Navalny talks about the palace and other issues, click the settings (cog) button, then choose ‘auto-generate Russian subtitles’, and then ‘auto-translate’, before choosing your language in the drop-down menu.

Or, skip past the two-hour investigation to the summary video that follows.

Brave man.

Here’s that summary in English:

Meanwhile, one of Navalny’s allies has called for protests to continue across Russia to demand his release, after he was imprisoned earlier this month, and is currently serving a 30-day sentence, concerning a case of alleged parole violations.

Leonid Volkov, the ally, made the call on the Telegram messaging app and Twitter, and promised to share more details later on Monday.

31 января, 12:00.
Все города России.
За свободу для Навального.
За свободу для всех.
За справедливость.

Все подробности сегодня позже.

— Leonid Volkov (@leonidvolkov) January 25, 2021

“January 31, 12:00. All cities of Russia. For freedom for Navalny. For freedom for everyone. For justice. More details later today,” Volkov tweeted.

The protests that took place this past weekend are being described as the “largest mass protests in recent history”:

More, with additional info on the palace:

Gerhard Mangott, a Russia expert at Innsbruck University, reckons that years of frustration have “woken up” Russian protesters from “their resignations”, with protests expected to continue.

“They have been galvanized — not so much by the poisoning of Alexei Navalny — but by his current arrest and by this video about Putin’s alleged palace on the Black Sea,” said Mangott, adding that the new protests in Russia may be attracting a larger audience.

“Not everyone who took to the streets on Saturday was demonstrating for Navalny, there were a large number of people who are frustrated about economic recession and political corruption.”

A record number of people – upwards of 3 500 by some counts – were detained on Saturday, in rallies in over 100 cities across the country.

Navalny could be facing three years in jail if the court rules in favour of the incarceration system, which says Navalny failed to check in with it twice per month while he was recovering from his poisoning in Germany.

With Putin at the helm, I don’t like his odds.

[source:dw]