NOVOSIBIRSK, Russia (AP) — Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who organized massive street protests in Moscow against Vladimir Putin four years ago, had a much harder time drawing a big crowd in Siberia’s largest city last month.
Or maybe it’s that Navalny’s anti-corruption message is being drowned out by a Kremlin media campaign increasingly focused on the separatist war in Ukraine and the standoff with the West.
The blogger and corruption fighter coined the now widely used description of the Kremlin-backed political party United Russia as one of “crooks and thieves.”
Navalny was convicted last year in a fraud case widely seen as …read more
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
