The biggest threat to the Putin administration is young — and has rubber duckies

pulse

March 28, 2017 9:17 PM

The face of the recent Russian anti-corruption protests is young, vocal and fed up with their country's government.

Police officers detain an opposition supporter during a rally in Vladivostok, Russia

On March 26, the police in Moscow arrested dozens of people who came out in protest of government corruption led by popular opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

But unlike demonstrations in the past based in Moscow, more than 90 similar protests took place all over the country in other large cities like St. Petersburg and smaller towns in Siberia and the Far East.

Navalny, who Russian courts sentenced to fifteen days in jail for organizing the protests and resisting police orders, rallied people to come out against Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian prime minister that he alleges gathered

Instead, Russia's youth gets information from the internet, which is 'still relatively free," according to Syrov, who added that "young people can find the truth there."

Without providing evidence, a Kremlin spokesperson said that protesters were "

Some protesters also painted their faces green and brought out rubber ducks as a nod to Navalny's allegation that Medvedev has a separate house for the ducks on his lavish 80 hectacre property which features nearly 20-foot walls.

Nina Khruscheva, a professor of international affairs at The New School and the great-granddaughter of Soviet leader Nikita Khruschev, said that the protests and the Kremlin's efforts to subdue them could intensify in advance of the 2018 presidential election, in which Navalny announced his plans to run in December 2016.

While the chance of the Kremlin allowing Navalny to even campaign is extremely slim, the recent protests — and the politician's popularity with a younger, internet-savvy crowd — show that the young voice of dissent in Russia could gain considerable steam.

"From what I hear people at the protests were very 'middle class' so to speak, engineers, artists," said Khruscheva. "Exactly the Navalny electorate."

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