MOSCOW — Law enforcement officials raided the residences and places of work of the opposition chief Aleksei A. Navalny and of his allies on Wednesday, growing stress on the Kremlin’s loudest critic forward of extra protests deliberate this weekend in his help.
The raids signaled that the authorities are gearing up for a brand new authorized strike towards Mr. Navalny’s group after demonstrations final weekend drew tens of hundreds of Russians to the streets of greater than 100 cities. Not less than a few of Wednesday’s raids concerned allegations that coronavirus restrictions had been violated on the rallies, Mr. Navalny’s allies stated.
Mr. Navalny himself stays in jail after being arrested upon his return to Russia on Jan. 17, dealing with a courtroom listening to subsequent week on alleged parole violations that might end in a yearslong jail sentence.
He had spent the earlier 5 months recovering in Germany from a poisoning that he described as an assassination try by the Russian state — and his return helped precipitate the most important anti-Kremlin protests in years.
His supporters hope that public stress will lead the Kremlin to launch Mr. Navalny, however Wednesday’s raids urged that it had no intention of doing so. Raids had been performed at Mr. Navalny’s condominium and that of his spouse, his YouTube studio, his basis’s workplace and the houses of at the very least 4 shut associates.
The Kremlin denies having something to do with Mr. Navalny’s poisoning.
On Wednesday, law enforcement officials got here to the house of Mr. Navalny’s spouse, Yulia Navalnaya, and compelled their manner into her condominium regardless of her insistence that they await her lawyer to reach, in accordance with video from the scene.
“They’ve damaged my door and entered the condominium,” Ms. Navalnaya yelled down to journalists exterior her Moscow high-rise. “They gained’t let my lawyer in.”
Two different associates of Mr. Navalny — his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, and a member of his investigations group, Georgy Alburov — had been taken from jail to be current at their residences as they had been searched, their supporters stated. Mr. Navalny’s brother, Oleg, was reported detained for 48 hours.
The condominium of Anastasia Vasilieva, who leads a medical employees group allied with Mr. Navalny, was additionally searched. Her spokeswoman posted a video of Dr. Vasilieva taking part in the piano whereas being confronted by a police officer.
The pinnacle of Mr. Navalny’s anti-corruption basis, Ivan Zhdanov, posted surveillance-camera footage to Twitter exhibiting a stream of law enforcement officials crowding the corridor on the group’s workplace. The police additionally searched the workplace of Navalny Reside, his YouTube channel, and took the channel’s director, Lyubov Sobol, to her house to proceed their search there, in accordance with her lawyer, Vladimir Voronin.
It was not clear what the officers had been in search of, although Mr. Zhdanov stated the searches had been linked to allegations of well being code violations. Moscow well being authorities stated that telephone location knowledge confirmed that 19 folks sick with Covid-19 had attended the unauthorized pro-Navalny rally in central Moscow final Saturday.
In all, greater than 3,000 folks had been arrested on Saturday amid some of the placing shows of discontent that Mr. Putin has confronted in 21 years in energy. Mr. Navalny’s supporters plan one other nationwide protest on Sunday, and have known as on folks in Moscow to collect in entrance of the headquarters of the home intelligence company, the F.S.B.
The protests have rattled the Kremlin, with state tv devoting in depth broadcast time to attacking Mr. Navalny in current days, after years of ignoring him. However Dmitri S. Peskov, Mr. Putin’s spokesman, insisted on Wednesday that the president was unmoved.
“There are incomparably extra of those that help Putin than those that don’t,” Mr. Peskov instructed reporters. “The bulk, after all, makes extra of an impression.”