An ally of jailed Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny urged Russians on Tuesday to “gather in residential courtyards near their homes at 1700 GMT” on February 14 to stage an anti-government protest.
Leonid Volkov encouraged residents of major Russian cities to go out into their courtyards or backyards on the evening of February 14, turn on the flashlight of their cell phones, and raise them skyward in the shape of a heart. He added that participants should also “bring candles and make heart shapes with them to mark Valentine’s Day and photograph them from above.”
“Let the social media feeds be filled with thousands of such burning hearts from dozens of Russian cities,” Volkov wrote on Telegram.
“He said the format, reminiscent of tactics used by the anti-government opposition in neighboring Belarus, should help distance protesters from the police,” Reuters noted on Tuesday.
Volkov, a Russian politician currently based in the European Union (E.U.) bloc nation of Lithuania, heads the political support team for Navalny, a Russian opposition leader. He previously stated on February 4 that mass protests across Russia demanding Navalny’s release from jail – organized by his team on January 23 and January 31 – would not resume until the spring. Volkov’s message changed on February 9, however, when he announced during a live interview with Russia’s MBH Media that his team will stage anti-government protests nationwide on February 14. Volkov explained that the demonstrations would not resemble traditional rallies or marches.
“It will be some completely different format. We will do everything much more cunning and will not try to directly interact with the police, we will move away from this,” he said, referring to the fact that the previous rallies demanding Navalny’s release were officially deemed “unauthorized” by the Russian state. Russian security forces arrested thousands of demonstrators nationwide during the unsanctioned January protests.
Volkov’s change in tactic prompted Russia’s foreign ministry on Tuesday to accuse Navalny’s allies of having received instructions from the NATO military alliance to disrupt Russian politics.
“On February 8, 2021, Poland’s permanent mission to the EU held an online meeting involving [Leonid] Volkov and [fellow Navalny ally Vladimir] Ashurkov, as well as EU countries, the US and the UK. In fact, it was a meeting of the NATO countries. They gave instructions to the ‘opposition’ members – who are actually their agents of influence – on how they should be more cunning in their future subversive activities,” Russian foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova alleged in a statement posted to Facebook on February 9.
Navalny was sentenced to nearly three years in a Russian penal colony on February 3 for a probation violation. Prior to his sentencing, Navalny had recently returned to his native Russia from Germany after spending the past five months there convalescing from what he says was a poisoning ordered by the Kremlin. Russia’s government has denied involvement in the incident, which German doctors have said was caused by Navalny’s exposure to the Soviet-era nerve agent Novichok.