Have Russia's anti-Putin protests gone stale?

It was almost inevitable that Alexey Navalny's day of protest would end in multiple arrests.

کد خبر: ۷۹۶۳۶۴

تاریخ: ۱۶ ارديبهشت ۱۳۹۷ - ۰۸:۵۵

More than 1,200 across Russia per the interior ministry, roughly half of those in Moscow.

"He is not our Tsar" is not a slogan that goes down well with Russia's leader two days before inauguration day.

The question is whether those numbers would have been as high if Mr Navalny had accepted the Moscow authorities' offer to hold his protest at Sakharov Avenue.

It's not that far from the centre and he was happy to show up there last Monday, when thousands turned up to protest against government attempts to shut down the messaging app Telegram.

But Navalny refused.

He wanted Tverskaya, Moscow's main boulevard running down to Red Square - which is why the protest was deemed illegal and the end result was what it was.

Police next to the monument to Russian poet Alexander Pushkin in Moscow
And it wasn't pretty.

The Russian police have made clearing out these protests something of an art-form through kettling, man-handling and an abundant use of the baton.

This time a bunch of ultra-nationalist Cossacks who had turned up for a patriotic counter-demo ran at protesters with whips.

But they seemed to tire of that quite quickly, thankfully.

It is no doubt a citizen's constitutional right to protest but authorities in many countries reserve the right to authorise a demo or not.

Mr Navalny and his supporters have legitimate concerns about the direction President Putin is taking their country and should be allowed to voice them.

For many protesting today, police heavy-handedness serves as a symbol of state repression.

But there is a degree of theatre to these demonstrations now which Mr Navalny himself helps choreograph.

He has gathered support across Russia but it is still only marginal, tiny in fact compared with the indisputably popular president.

Perhaps at the start of another six-year term for President Putin, is Mr Navalny not better served by focusing on his anti-corruption campaign which exposes the system for what it is, not for what he tries to make it seem?