Some amazing things are erupting in Russia.
Police detained hundreds of protesters across Russia on Sunday, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, after thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against corruption and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
The protests, reckoned to be the biggest since a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2011/2012, come a year before a presidential election which Vladimir Putin is expected to contest, running for what would be a fourth term.
This is extraordinary courage being shown by protestors in Moscow and St. Petersburgh.
The Kremlin said on Friday that plans for the central Moscow protest, which the city’s authorities had rejected, were an illegal provocation.
Grigory Okhotin, one of the founders of OVD Info, a human rights organization which monitors detentions, said around 600 people had been detained in Moscow on Sunday.
Our Week Day White House Resident’s response is as expected.
Neither the White House, State Department, or the US Embassy in Moscow had issued any statements by Sunday afternoon. As of 2 p.m. Eastern time, a State Department spokesperson was unable to provide any statements, or say if one was expected.
President Donald Trump has called for warming relations with Russia and more cooperation on counter-terrorism. In a February TV interview, Trump said he respects Putin and declined to criticize Russia’s human rights record, explaining: “What do you think? Our country’s so innocent?”
But, here’s something that would give Paul Ryan some ideas.
This weekend also saw protests in Belarus, a country on Russia’s western border. Authorities in Minsk on Saturday arrested as many as 400 people protesting a tax on the unemployed.
The Russian people are standing up to the corrupt thievery of Putin and company, Putin’s Puppet will not protest. Which office holders in the US will?