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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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Vladimir Putin killed my friend Alexei Navalny this week. There will be a time and place to discuss the politics and how the free world should respond. For now, I want to share a few memories.
The Alexei Navalny I knew was super smart. For me, the sign of a true intellectual is the courage to change your mind. We disagreed about some things he had said in the past, particularly about the Caucasus and Crimea. He listened, and it felt to me he was rethinking some of his earlier statements. But he also pushed back, challenging my commitment to “neoliberalism” in the 1990s. Russia would be better off, he argued, had the West supported social democratic ideas back then. He was right. I changed my mind, too. That’s called learning. He was exceptional at that.
The Alexei I knew was extremely charming. I remember our first meeting at the White House in 2009 when I worked at the National Security Council. My boss at the time, Barack Obama, was known for his charisma. Navalny had Obama-caliber presence. I understood that day why Putin feared him. In a free and fair election, Navalny would have destroyed Putin. Remember that the next time you read a poll in the media about Putin’s popularity.
The Alexei I knew was incredibly funny. When I served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014, we never had a formal meeting, just one chance encounter at an anniversary dinner for the Moscow Times. Navalny understood that any public meetings with me would just fuel conspiracy stories constantly propagated on Putin’s media channels — that the United States was funding his operation. So, instead, we interacted on Twitter, always in a humorous, playful way.
When I once called Russia a “wild country” after a group of paid Putin agitators accosted me on the street, it felt like the whole world, including many in the United States, berated me for my “undiplomatic” outburst. Not Alexei. He asked on Twitter why I did not just belt them, since I had diplomatic immunity. In another tweet, lampooning Putin’s conspiracy-mongering, Navalny instructed me to meet him at some metro station in the “last wagon” (a common way to meet people during the Soviet days) to do our “secret” business.
The Alexei I knew — and that the world knew — was incredibly brave and firmly committed to his values: fighting Putin’s corruption and trying to liberate his country from totalitarian dictatorship. As a scholar of democratization and a sometimes activist for democracy, I have studied or had the privilege of meeting some of the most courageous freedom fighters in the world. Navalny was one of them — the Mandela of Putin’s Russia. Nelson Mandela survived his three decades of captivity. Navalny tragically did not.
The Alexei I knew was a fierce family man. He was so proud of his daughter, Dasha, when she got into Stanford, where I teach. He and his wife, Yuliya, were just like all the other excited Stanford parents when they dropped Dasha off on campus her first year. And they have watched her grow into a strong, principled, charismatic leader, just like her dad and mom. Of course, Alexei had to watch from afar.
In fact, well before he decided to go back to Russia, it seemed to me his deepest anxiety was not about enduring torture in Putin’s gulag or even facing death, but about being an absentee father and husband. By doing what he thought was right for his country, he knew that he was asking his family to sacrifice a lot, too. And today, that sacrifice has grown so much larger.
Navalny dreamed of a free Russia. Barbaric dictators such as Putin can kill men, but they cannot kill ideas. I do not know when, but I am confident that Navalny’s ideas of freedom will outlive Putin’s ideas of tyranny.
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
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in an out of nowhere come from behind victory, Putin retains power in Russia
Russians crowd polling stations in apparent protest as Putin is set to extend his rule
By EMMA BURROWS and DASHA LITVINOVA
55 mins ago
Russians crowded outside polling stations at midday Sunday on the last day of a presidential election, apparently heeding an opposition call to protest against President Vladimir Putin in a vote that offered them no real alternatives.
Putin is poised to extend his nearly quarter century of rule for six more years after a relentless crackdown on dissent — and early returns announced after polls closed in Russia showed he had nearly 88% of the vote with 24% of the precincts counted, according to Russia’s Central Election Commission.
The election took place amid attacks within Russia by Ukrainian missiles and drones, which have killed several people. Polling happened in a tightly controlled environment where Putin only faces competition from three token rivals and any public criticism of him or his war in Ukraine is stifled.
Putin’s fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters have virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election is extremely limited.
Navalny's associates urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to protest by coming to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.
Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name.
She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.
Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr. Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr. Putin, because he’s a killer, he’s a gangster.”
Some Russians waiting to vote in Moscow and St. Petersburg told the Associated Press that they were taking part in the protest, but it wasn’t possible to confirm whether all of those pictured in line were doing so.
Joining a line at a polling station around noon in Moscow, a woman who said her name was Yulia told the AP that she was voting for the first time.
“Even if my vote doesn’t change anything, my conscience will be clear ... for the future that I want to see for our country,” she said. She, like others, didn't give her full name because of security concerns.
Another Moscow voter, who also identified himself only by his first name, Vadim, said he hoped for change, but added that “unfortunately, it’s unlikely.”
Independent Russian media posted images of spoiled ballots posted by voters, with “killer and thief” inscribed on one, and “waiting for you in The Hague” written on another, in a reference to an arrest warrant issued for Putin on war crimes charges related to his alleged responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.
Still, some people told the AP that they were happy to vote for Putin.
Dmitry Sergienko, who cast his ballot in Moscow, said, “I am happy with everything and want everything to continue as it is now.”
While Russians went to the polls, a major Ukrainian drone attack across Russia Sunday once again was a reminder of challenges faced by the Kremlin.
The governor of the Belgorod region near Ukraine said that three people were killed in the attacks while Russia's Defense Ministry said it took down more than 100 Ukrainian drones and missiles across the weekend.
Voting took place over three days at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. While polls closed Sunday night in Russia, voting continued at some embassies around the world.
Despite tight controls, several dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported across the voting period.
Several people were arrested, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after they tried to start fires or set off explosives at polling stations while others were detained for throwing green antiseptic or ink into ballot boxes.
Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy head of the Russian Security Council chaired by Putin, called for toughening the punishment for those who vandalize polling stations, arguing they should face treason charges.
Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of the Golos independent election watchdog, said that pressure on voters from law enforcement had reached unprecedented levels.
Russians, he said in a social media post, were searched at polling stations, their ballots checked before they were cast, and police demanded a ballot box was opened to remove a ballot.
"It's the first time in my life that I've seen such absurdities,” Andreychuk wrote on the messaging app Telegram, adding that he started monitoring elections in Russia 20 years ago.
A video, shared on social media, also appeared to show an armed man in camouflage gear going into booths, harassing Russians as they voted.
Ivan Zhdanov, the head of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that the opposition's call to protest had been successful.
“The action has shown that there's another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
Huge lines also formed around noon outside Russian diplomatic missions in London, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Belgrade and other cities with large Russian communities, many of whom left Russia after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Protesters in Berlin displayed a figure of Putin bathing in a bath of blood with the Ukrainian flag on the side, alongside shredded ballots in ballot boxes.
Russian state television and officials said the lines abroad showed strong turnout. The Russian Embassy in Germany posted a video of the queue in Berlin on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “together we are strong — Vote for Russia!”
In Tallinn, where hundreds stood in a line snaking around the Estonian capital's cobbled streets leading to the Russian Embassy, 23-year-old Tatiana said she came to take part in the protest at noon.
“If we have some option to protest I think it’s important to utilize any opportunity,” she said, only giving her first name, citing personal security reasons.
Boris Nadezhdin, a liberal politician who tried to join the race on an anti-war platform but was barred from running by election officials, voiced hope that many Russians cast their ballots against Putin.
"I believe that the Russian people today have a chance to show their real attitude to what is happening by voting not for Putin, but for some other candidates or in some other way, which is exactly what I did,” he said after voting in Dolgoprudny, just outside Moscow.
The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said that 80 people were arrested in 20 cities across Russia on Sunday.
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Russian voters, answering Navalny’s call, protest as Putin extends his rule By Francesca Ebel and Robyn Dixon March 17, 2024 at 18:30 ET MOSCOW — On the final day of a presidential election with only one possible result, Russians protested Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian hold on power by forming long lines to vote against him at noon Sunday — answering the call of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and undercutting preliminary results Sunday night that led Putin to claim a landslide victory. Russia’s Central Election Commission, which routinely bars any real challengers from running, reported late Sunday that Putin had received more than 87 percent of the vote with 75 percent of ballots counted. Putin quickly claimed a fifth term in office, extending his rule until at least 2030. He said he would continue his war against Ukraine where “in some areas our guys are simply cutting the enemy to pieces right now.” Russia’s elections have long been widely condemned as neither free nor fair and failing to meet basic democratic standards, with the Kremlin approving opposition candidates and tightly controlling media access. That meant Putin’s victory was preordained. The turnout of protesters in wartime Russia, by contrast, was far less certain. Navalny had urged the midday action before dying suddenly in prison last month. In his initial victory remarks, Putin commented on Navalny’s death for the first time and confirmed reports that talks had been underway to exchange Navalny, long his most formidable political critic, for Russians imprisoned in the West. “A few days before Mr. Navalny passed away some people told me there is an idea to exchange him with some people who are incarcerated in Western countries,” Putin said. “You can believe me or not but even before the person could finish their phrase I said I agree. But what happened happened unfortunately. I had only one condition — that we swap him and that he doesn’t come back. Let him sit there. But this happens. You can’t do anything about that.” Russian authorities said Navalny died of natural causes while Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Putin of ordering his murder. The Kremlin rejects the allegations. The “Noon Against Putin” protest, with voters forming queues at polling stations in major cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, was a striking — if futile — display of solidarity and dissent and challenged the Kremlin’s main message: that Putin is a legitimate president who commands massive support. Many polling stations in Moscow were deathly quiet on Sunday morning, but long lines appeared at exactly 12 p.m. — despite authorities sending mass text messages warning people against participating in “extremist” actions and in the face of severe repression of dissent since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests. Navalny, who had long crusaded for free and fair elections in Russia and was blocked from running for president in 2018, had urged Russians to vote against Putin at noon Sunday. It turned out to be Navalny’s final political act before his death.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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Russia says 60 dead, 145 injured in concert hall raid; Islamic State group claims responsibility
Yesterday
MOSCOW (AP) — Assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group's branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.
It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”
The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the assailants burst into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic. The Investigative Committee, the top state criminal investigation agency, reported early Saturday that more than 60 people were killed. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured — 115 of them hospitalized, including five children.
Some Russian news reports suggested more victims could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives.
Video showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.
The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired on concertgoers.
Dave Primov, who was in the hall during the attack, described panic and chaos when the attack began.
“There were volleys of gunfire,” Primov told the AP. “We all got up and tried to move toward the aisles. People began to panic, started to run and collided with each other. Some fell down and others trampled on them.”
Videos posted by Russian media and on messaging app channels showed men toting assault rifles shooting screaming people at point-blank range. One video showed a man in the auditorium saying the assailants had set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly.
Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.
In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.
However, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the claim by the Islamic State group's branch based in Afghanistan that it was responsible for the Moscow attack, a U.S. official told the AP.
The official said U.S. intelligence agencies had gathered information in recent weeks that the IS branch was planning an attack in Moscow. He said U.S. officials privately shared the intelligence earlier this month with Russian officials. The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence information and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”
In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of former Soviet Union.
On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.
On Friday, statements of outrage, shock and support for those affected by the concert call attack streamed in from around the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who relentlessly surveil and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.
Russian officials said security was tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings, and theaters and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine and called for ramping up strikes. Hours before the attack, the Russian military l aunched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said that if Ukraine involvement was proven, all those involved “must be tracked down and killed without mercy, including officials of the state that committed such outrage.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he couldn’t yet speak about the details but “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
Friday's attack followed a statement earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged Americans to avoid crowded places in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in the Russian capital, including concerts. The warning was repeated by several other Western embassies.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Friday the U.S. government had information about a planned attack in Moscow, prompting the State Department advisory to Americans. The U.S. government shared the information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding “duty to warn” policy, Watson said.
Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in this week’s presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All that resembles open blackmail and an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.
Russia was shaken by a series of deadly terror attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most from effects of narcotic gas Russian forces use to subdue the attackers.
In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.
___
Associate Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
___
This story was updated to correct that John Kirby is a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, not the White House national security adviser.
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Funny, no mention of the pancaked apartment building full of old people that precipitated the attacks referenced. Anyone get POOTWH’s comments and whether he’s spoken to or sent a message to Putin on the ritz? Presumptive next POTUS and all?
How about Putin on the ritz’s remarks about the US embassy warning? Smells nothing like teen spirit and a whole lot like wagging the dog.
Maggie Three Names should hold a presser. Against POOTWH.
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you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
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up my ass, like Chadwick was up his Posts: 35,802
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
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another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Opinion Goodbye to my fearless friend, Alexei Navalny
Vladimir Putin killed my friend Alexei Navalny this week. There will be a time and place to discuss the politics and how the free world should respond. For now, I want to share a few memories.
The Alexei Navalny I knew was super smart. For me, the sign of a true intellectual is the courage to change your mind. We disagreed about some things he had said in the past, particularly about the Caucasus and Crimea. He listened, and it felt to me he was rethinking some of his earlier statements. But he also pushed back, challenging my commitment to “neoliberalism” in the 1990s. Russia would be better off, he argued, had the West supported social democratic ideas back then. He was right. I changed my mind, too. That’s called learning. He was exceptional at that.
The Alexei I knew was extremely charming. I remember our first meeting at the White House in 2009 when I worked at the National Security Council. My boss at the time, Barack Obama, was known for his charisma. Navalny had Obama-caliber presence. I understood that day why Putin feared him. In a free and fair election, Navalny would have destroyed Putin. Remember that the next time you read a poll in the media about Putin’s popularity.
The Alexei I knew was incredibly funny. When I served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia from 2012-2014, we never had a formal meeting, just one chance encounter at an anniversary dinner for the Moscow Times. Navalny understood that any public meetings with me would just fuel conspiracy stories constantly propagated on Putin’s media channels — that the United States was funding his operation. So, instead, we interacted on Twitter, always in a humorous, playful way.
When I once called Russia a “wild country” after a group of paid Putin agitators accosted me on the street, it felt like the whole world, including many in the United States, berated me for my “undiplomatic” outburst. Not Alexei. He asked on Twitter why I did not just belt them, since I had diplomatic immunity. In another tweet, lampooning Putin’s conspiracy-mongering, Navalny instructed me to meet him at some metro station in the “last wagon” (a common way to meet people during the Soviet days) to do our “secret” business.
The Alexei I knew — and that the world knew — was incredibly brave and firmly committed to his values: fighting Putin’s corruption and trying to liberate his country from totalitarian dictatorship. As a scholar of democratization and a sometimes activist for democracy, I have studied or had the privilege of meeting some of the most courageous freedom fighters in the world. Navalny was one of them — the Mandela of Putin’s Russia. Nelson Mandela survived his three decades of captivity. Navalny tragically did not.
The Alexei I knew was a fierce family man. He was so proud of his daughter, Dasha, when she got into Stanford, where I teach. He and his wife, Yuliya, were just like all the other excited Stanford parents when they dropped Dasha off on campus her first year. And they have watched her grow into a strong, principled, charismatic leader, just like her dad and mom. Of course, Alexei had to watch from afar.
In fact, well before he decided to go back to Russia, it seemed to me his deepest anxiety was not about enduring torture in Putin’s gulag or even facing death, but about being an absentee father and husband. By doing what he thought was right for his country, he knew that he was asking his family to sacrifice a lot, too. And today, that sacrifice has grown so much larger.
Navalny dreamed of a free Russia. Barbaric dictators such as Putin can kill men, but they cannot kill ideas. I do not know when, but I am confident that Navalny’s ideas of freedom will outlive Putin’s ideas of tyranny.
Opinion | Alexei Navalny’s ideas of freedom will outlive Putin’s ideas of tyranny - The Washington Post
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Russians crowded outside polling stations at midday Sunday on the last day of a presidential election, apparently heeding an opposition call to protest against President Vladimir Putin in a vote that offered them no real alternatives.
Putin is poised to extend his nearly quarter century of rule for six more years after a relentless crackdown on dissent — and early returns announced after polls closed in Russia showed he had nearly 88% of the vote with 24% of the precincts counted, according to Russia’s Central Election Commission.
The election took place amid attacks within Russia by Ukrainian missiles and drones, which have killed several people. Polling happened in a tightly controlled environment where Putin only faces competition from three token rivals and any public criticism of him or his war in Ukraine is stifled.
Putin’s fiercest political foe, Alexei Navalny, died in an Arctic prison last month, and other critics are either in jail or in exile. Beyond the fact that voters have virtually no choice, independent monitoring of the election is extremely limited.
Navalny's associates urged those unhappy with Putin or the war to protest by coming to the polls at noon on Sunday — and lines outside a number of polling stations both inside Russia and at its embassies around the world appeared to swell at that time.
Among those heeding call was Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny’s widow, who joined a long line at the Russian Embassy in Berlin as some in the crowd applauded and chanted her name.
She spent more than five hours in the line and told reporters after casting her vote that she wrote her late husband’s name on the ballot.
Asked whether she had a message for Putin, Navalnaya replied: “Please stop asking for messages from me or from somebody for Mr. Putin. There could be no negotiations and nothing with Mr. Putin, because he’s a killer, he’s a gangster.”
Some Russians waiting to vote in Moscow and St. Petersburg told the Associated Press that they were taking part in the protest, but it wasn’t possible to confirm whether all of those pictured in line were doing so.
Joining a line at a polling station around noon in Moscow, a woman who said her name was Yulia told the AP that she was voting for the first time.
“Even if my vote doesn’t change anything, my conscience will be clear ... for the future that I want to see for our country,” she said. She, like others, didn't give her full name because of security concerns.
Another Moscow voter, who also identified himself only by his first name, Vadim, said he hoped for change, but added that “unfortunately, it’s unlikely.”
Independent Russian media posted images of spoiled ballots posted by voters, with “killer and thief” inscribed on one, and “waiting for you in The Hague” written on another, in a reference to an arrest warrant issued for Putin on war crimes charges related to his alleged responsibility for the abductions of children from Ukraine.
Still, some people told the AP that they were happy to vote for Putin.
Dmitry Sergienko, who cast his ballot in Moscow, said, “I am happy with everything and want everything to continue as it is now.”
While Russians went to the polls, a major Ukrainian drone attack across Russia Sunday once again was a reminder of challenges faced by the Kremlin.
The governor of the Belgorod region near Ukraine said that three people were killed in the attacks while Russia's Defense Ministry said it took down more than 100 Ukrainian drones and missiles across the weekend.
Voting took place over three days at polling stations across the vast country’s 11 time zones, in illegally annexed regions of Ukraine and online. While polls closed Sunday night in Russia, voting continued at some embassies around the world.
Despite tight controls, several dozen cases of vandalism at polling stations were reported across the voting period.
Several people were arrested, including in Moscow and St. Petersburg, after they tried to start fires or set off explosives at polling stations while others were detained for throwing green antiseptic or ink into ballot boxes.
Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy head of the Russian Security Council chaired by Putin, called for toughening the punishment for those who vandalize polling stations, arguing they should face treason charges.
Stanislav Andreychuk, co-chair of the Golos independent election watchdog, said that pressure on voters from law enforcement had reached unprecedented levels.
Russians, he said in a social media post, were searched at polling stations, their ballots checked before they were cast, and police demanded a ballot box was opened to remove a ballot.
"It's the first time in my life that I've seen such absurdities,” Andreychuk wrote on the messaging app Telegram, adding that he started monitoring elections in Russia 20 years ago.
A video, shared on social media, also appeared to show an armed man in camouflage gear going into booths, harassing Russians as they voted.
Ivan Zhdanov, the head of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation, said that the opposition's call to protest had been successful.
“The action has shown that there's another Russia, there are people who stand against Putin.”
Huge lines also formed around noon outside Russian diplomatic missions in London, Berlin, Paris, Milan, Belgrade and other cities with large Russian communities, many of whom left Russia after Putin's invasion of Ukraine.
Protesters in Berlin displayed a figure of Putin bathing in a bath of blood with the Ukrainian flag on the side, alongside shredded ballots in ballot boxes.
Russian state television and officials said the lines abroad showed strong turnout. The Russian Embassy in Germany posted a video of the queue in Berlin on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption, “together we are strong — Vote for Russia!”
In Tallinn, where hundreds stood in a line snaking around the Estonian capital's cobbled streets leading to the Russian Embassy, 23-year-old Tatiana said she came to take part in the protest at noon.
“If we have some option to protest I think it’s important to utilize any opportunity,” she said, only giving her first name, citing personal security reasons.
Boris Nadezhdin, a liberal politician who tried to join the race on an anti-war platform but was barred from running by election officials, voiced hope that many Russians cast their ballots against Putin.
"I believe that the Russian people today have a chance to show their real attitude to what is happening by voting not for Putin, but for some other candidates or in some other way, which is exactly what I did,” he said after voting in Dolgoprudny, just outside Moscow.
The OVD-Info group that monitors political arrests said that 80 people were arrested in 20 cities across Russia on Sunday.
___
Follow AP’s coverage of Russia’s election: https://apnews.com/hub/russia-election
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By Francesca Ebel and Robyn Dixon
March 17, 2024 at 18:30 ET
MOSCOW — On the final day of a presidential election with only one possible result, Russians protested Vladimir Putin’s authoritarian hold on power by forming long lines to vote against him at noon Sunday — answering the call of the late opposition leader Alexei Navalny, and undercutting preliminary results Sunday night that led Putin to claim a landslide victory.
Russia’s Central Election Commission, which routinely bars any real challengers from running, reported late Sunday that Putin had received more than 87 percent of the vote with 75 percent of ballots counted. Putin quickly claimed a fifth term in office, extending his rule until at least 2030. He said he would continue his war against Ukraine where “in some areas our guys are simply cutting the enemy to pieces right now.”
Russia’s elections have long been widely condemned as neither free nor fair and failing to meet basic democratic standards, with the Kremlin approving opposition candidates and tightly controlling media access. That meant Putin’s victory was preordained. The turnout of protesters in wartime Russia, by contrast, was far less certain. Navalny had urged the midday action before dying suddenly in prison last month.
In his initial victory remarks, Putin commented on Navalny’s death for the first time and confirmed reports that talks had been underway to exchange Navalny, long his most formidable political critic, for Russians imprisoned in the West.
“A few days before Mr. Navalny passed away some people told me there is an idea to exchange him with some people who are incarcerated in Western countries,” Putin said. “You can believe me or not but even before the person could finish their phrase I said I agree. But what happened happened unfortunately. I had only one condition — that we swap him and that he doesn’t come back. Let him sit there. But this happens. You can’t do anything about that.”
Russian authorities said Navalny died of natural causes while Navalny’s widow, Yulia Navalnaya, has accused Putin of ordering his murder. The Kremlin rejects the allegations.
The “Noon Against Putin” protest, with voters forming queues at polling stations in major cities such as Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Chelyabinsk, Tomsk and Novosibirsk, was a striking — if futile — display of solidarity and dissent and challenged the Kremlin’s main message: that Putin is a legitimate president who commands massive support.
Many polling stations in Moscow were deathly quiet on Sunday morning, but long lines appeared at exactly 12 p.m. — despite authorities sending mass text messages warning people against participating in “extremist” actions and in the face of severe repression of dissent since the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which has resulted in hundreds of arrests.
Navalny, who had long crusaded for free and fair elections in Russia and was blocked from running for president in 2018, had urged Russians to vote against Putin at noon Sunday. It turned out to be Navalny’s final political act before his death.
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MOSCOW (AP) — Assailants burst into a large concert hall in Moscow on Friday and sprayed the crowd with gunfire, killing over 60 people, injuring more than 100 and setting fire to the venue in a brazen attack just days after President Vladimir Putin cemented his grip on power in a highly orchestrated electoral landslide.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement posted on affiliated channels on social media. A U.S. intelligence official told The Associated Press that U.S. intelligence agencies had learned the group's branch in Afghanistan was planning an attack in Moscow and shared the information with Russian officials.
It wasn’t immediately clear what happened to the attackers after the raid, which state investigators were investigating as terrorism.
The attack, which left the concert hall in flames with a collapsing roof, was the deadliest in Russia in years and came as the country’s war in Ukraine dragged into a third year. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin called the raid a “huge tragedy.”
The Kremlin said Putin was informed minutes after the assailants burst into Crocus City Hall, a large music venue on Moscow’s western edge that can accommodate 6,200 people.
The attack took place as crowds gathered for a performance by the Russian rock band Picnic. The Investigative Committee, the top state criminal investigation agency, reported early Saturday that more than 60 people were killed. Health authorities released a list of 145 injured — 115 of them hospitalized, including five children.
Some Russian news reports suggested more victims could have been trapped by the blaze that erupted after the assailants threw explosives.
Video showed the building on fire, with a huge cloud of smoke rising through the night sky. The street was lit up by the blinking blue lights of dozens of firetrucks, ambulances and other emergency vehicles, as fire helicopters buzzed overhead to dump water on the blaze that took hours to contain.
The prosecutor’s office said several men in combat fatigues entered the concert hall and fired on concertgoers.
Dave Primov, who was in the hall during the attack, described panic and chaos when the attack began.
“There were volleys of gunfire,” Primov told the AP. “We all got up and tried to move toward the aisles. People began to panic, started to run and collided with each other. Some fell down and others trampled on them.”
Videos posted by Russian media and on messaging app channels showed men toting assault rifles shooting screaming people at point-blank range. One video showed a man in the auditorium saying the assailants had set it on fire, as gunshots rang out incessantly.
Guards at the concert hall didn’t have guns, and some could have been killed at the start of the attack, Russian media reported. Some Russian news outlets suggested the assailants fled before special forces and riot police arrived. Reports said police patrols were looking for several vehicles the attackers could have used to escape.
In a statement posted by its Aamaq news agency, the Islamic State group said it attacked a large gathering of “Christians” in Krasnogorsk on Moscow’s outskirts, killing and wounding hundreds. It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the claim.
However, U.S. intelligence officials confirmed the claim by the Islamic State group's branch based in Afghanistan that it was responsible for the Moscow attack, a U.S. official told the AP.
The official said U.S. intelligence agencies had gathered information in recent weeks that the IS branch was planning an attack in Moscow. He said U.S. officials privately shared the intelligence earlier this month with Russian officials. The official was briefed on the matter but was not authorized to publicly discuss the intelligence information and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.
Noting that the IS statement cast its claim as an attack targeting Christians, Aymenn Jawad al-Tamimi, an expert on the terrorist group, said it appeared to reflect the group’s strategy of “striking wherever they can as part of a global ‘fight the infidels and apostates everywhere.’”
In October 2015, a bomb planted by IS downed a Russian passenger plane over Sinai, killing all 224 people on board, most of them Russian vacation-goers returning from Egypt. The group, which operates mainly in Syria and Iraq but also in Afghanistan and Africa, also has claimed several attacks in Russia’s volatile Caucasus and other regions in the past years. It recruited fighters from Russia and other parts of former Soviet Union.
On March 7, Russia’s top security agency said it thwarted an attack on a synagogue in Moscow by an Islamic State cell, killing several of its members in the Kaluga region near the Russian capital. A few days earlier, Russian authorities said six alleged IS members were killed in a shootout in Ingushetia in Russia’s Caucasus region.
On Friday, statements of outrage, shock and support for those affected by the concert call attack streamed in from around the world.
Some commentators on Russian social media questioned how authorities, who relentlessly surveil and pressure Kremlin critics, failed to identify the threat and prevent the attack.
Russian officials said security was tightened at Moscow’s airports, railway stations and the capital’s sprawling subway system. Moscow’s mayor canceled all mass gatherings, and theaters and museums shut for the weekend. Other Russian regions also tightened security.
The Kremlin didn’t immediately blame anyone for the attack, but some Russian lawmakers were quick to accuse Ukraine and called for ramping up strikes. Hours before the attack, the Russian military l aunched a sweeping barrage on Ukraine’s power system, crippling the country’s biggest hydroelectric plant and other energy facilities and leaving more than a million people without electricity.
Dmitry Medvedev, deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, said that if Ukraine involvement was proven, all those involved “must be tracked down and killed without mercy, including officials of the state that committed such outrage.”
Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, denied Ukraine involvement.
“Ukraine has never resorted to the use of terrorist methods,” he posted on X. “Everything in this war will be decided only on the battlefield.”
John Kirby, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said he couldn’t yet speak about the details but “the images are just horrible. And just hard to watch.”
Friday's attack followed a statement earlier this month by the U.S. Embassy in Moscow that urged Americans to avoid crowded places in view of “imminent” plans by extremists to target large gatherings in the Russian capital, including concerts. The warning was repeated by several other Western embassies.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Friday the U.S. government had information about a planned attack in Moscow, prompting the State Department advisory to Americans. The U.S. government shared the information with Russian authorities in accordance with its longstanding “duty to warn” policy, Watson said.
Putin, who extended his grip on Russia for another six years in this week’s presidential vote after a sweeping crackdown on dissent, denounced the Western warnings as an attempt to intimidate Russians. “All that resembles open blackmail and an attempt to frighten and destabilize our society,” he said earlier this week.
Russia was shaken by a series of deadly terror attacks in the early 2000s during the fighting with separatists in the Russian province of Chechnya.
In October 2002, Chechen militants took about 800 people hostage at a Moscow theater. Two days later, Russian special forces stormed the building and 129 hostages and 41 Chechen fighters died, most from effects of narcotic gas Russian forces use to subdue the attackers.
In September 2004, about 30 Chechen militants seized a school in Beslan in southern Russia taking hundreds of hostages. The siege ended in a bloodbath two days later and more than 330 people, about half of them children, were killed.
___
Associate Press writer Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
___
This story was updated to correct that John Kirby is a spokesman for the White House National Security Council, not the White House national security adviser.
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Brilliantati©
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Libtardaplorable©. And proud of it.
Brilliantati©
i thought trump eradicated isis? how do i know? because he has never shut the fuck up about it.
somehow this will become biden's fault and a new election issue for gop to run on.
"Well, you tell him that I don't talk to suckas."
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