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Monday, January 29, 2018, 23:38
Kremlin says opposition leader Navalny not a threat in election
By Reuters
Monday, January 29, 2018, 23:38 By Reuters

In this June 21, 2017 photo, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov attends a meeting of Russian President Vladimir Putin with Ben van Beurden, CEO of Royal Dutch Shell (both not pictured) at the Kremlin in Moscow. (Sergei Karpukhin / POOL / AFP)

MOSCOW – The Kremlin said on Monday it did not regard opposition leader Alexei Navalny as a political threat to the upcoming presidential election and that protests he had organized on Sunday had been sparsely attended in places. 

Navalny, who has been barred from running over what he says is a trumped-up suspended prison sentence, has called on voters to boycott what he says will be a rigged election on March 18. 

Putin is an absolute leader in the public's opinion, a leader of the political Olympus, with whom at this stage it is unlikely anyone could compete. 

Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman 

Opinion polls show incumbent President Vladimir Putin is on track to be easily re-elected. 

Though unlikely to influence the result, Navalny's call for a boycott attracted thousands of protesters to rallies across Russia on Sunday, which saw the opposition leader detained by the police for several hours. 

READ MORE: Russian opposition leader arrested amid election protests

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call on Monday it was unlikely that anyone could compete with Putin in the race. 

"Putin is an absolute leader in the public's opinion, a leader of the political Olympus, with whom at this stage it is unlikely anyone could compete," Peskov said. 

He said some of the protests had been thinly attended. 

Asked whether the Kremlin considered Navalny a threat, Peskov said "no". 

Around 1,500 protesters converged at a square adjacent to the Kremlin on Sunday, with hundreds also attending rallies in St. Petersburg, Russia's second-biggest city, in Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, and other major centers. 

Moments after Navalny appeared at Sunday's rally in Moscow he was wrestled into a patrol wagon and taken into detention. 

He was released around midnight without charges, his lawyer Olga Mikhailova told Reuters, but would face court at a later date. 

If charged with violating laws on holding demonstrations, Navalny could face up to 30 days in prison.

SOCHI PEACE CONFERENCE 

The Kremlin also shrugged off a Syrian opposition decision to boycott a peace conference it is organizing in Russia this week, saying the event would go ahead regardless and make a meaningful contribution to finding a political solution. 

ALSO READ: Syrian opposition says to boycott Russia-brokered Sochi talks

Russia is hosting what it has called a Syrian Congress of National Dialogue in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on Tuesday that it hopes will launch negotiations on drafting a new constitution for Syria after almost seven years of civil war. 

But Western powers and some Arab states believe Sochi is an attempt to create a separate peace process that would undermine UN efforts to broker a peace deal while laying the groundwork for a solution more suitable to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his allies, Russia and Iran. 

Talking on this, Peskov said the opposition boycott would not seriously hinder the conference. 

"The fact that some representatives of the processes currently taking place in Syria are not participating is unlikely to stop this congress from going ahead and is unlikely to seriously undermine the importance of the congress," he said.

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