In mid-September, Russian opposition Presidential candidate Alexey Navalny embarked on a massive regional tour in support of his campaign, which is expected to cover dozens of cities across the country from Kalinigrad to Vladivostok as part of his campaign to support the 2018 Presidential bid. Just the first regional gatherings showed unprecedented public support for Navalny in the regions, unknown for any other Russian politician, including even Vladimir Putin, whose public rallies (relatively rare, to be exact) have been plagued by administrative pressure used to forcefully bring budget-salary workers to attend. On the contrary, Navalny's rallies were not only strictly voluntary in attendance, but also arranged with great difficulty and resistance from authorities: they have tried to deny authorization of the rallies, exert police pressure on activists involved in preparation of the rallies, seize advertising materials, distribute fake flyers with false information misleading citizens about Navalny and time and place of the rallies, create difficulties with sound, equipment and security, organized massive intimidation campaigns in schools and universities trying to stop students from attending.

None of these pressure measures have worked: in every city he visited, Navalny has attracted unprecedented enthusiastic crowds demanding changes to the country's political system. In the cities of Murmansk, Omsk, Vladivostok, Khabarovsk September rallies in support of Navalny were arguably the biggest ever street protest rallies in the whole city history. In Murmansk, with population of about 300,000, over 3 thousand people showing up, more than 1% of the city's population – Murmansk has never seen anything like that.

The magnitude of regional public rallies in support of Navalny's Presidential bid is something unprecedented for the whole Russian politics, and signals really deep demand for change across the country. This is the scale of political protest that the Russian regions really did not experience since 1990-1991 (protests of Winter of 2011-2012 were largely concentrated in Moscow). High enthusiastic turnout taking place despite intense police and administrative pressure on people suggests that many Russians, particularly from younger generation, are not simply ready to accept just another merely formal extension of Vladimir Putin's rule for six more years, and demand a real contested Presidential election.

Navalny in this regard symbolizes hopes of many Russians that such real competition of ideas about the country's future direction may take place. So far, none of his regional rallies have disappointed: in each city, he attracted crowds of several thousand people, which at times stood there for hours despite bad weather and rain. During Autumn, Navalny expects to visit dozens of Russian cities, clearly demonstrating that authorities' attempts to ban his participation in the Presidential elections are unfounded and deny the free expression of will of the Russian people. At the same time, Navalny's appeal against the politicized Russian court ruling on Kirovles case creating obstacles for Navalny's participation in the Presidential election is being considered by the European Court of Human Rights. Recently, the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe has officially ruled that Russia is not complying with last year's ECHR ruling which overturned Russian “criminal conviction” on Kirovles case as politicized.

We strongly advise to watch the growing momentum of regional support for Navalny and his further rallies during Autumn as a crucial build-up towards the upcoming Presidential elections in Russia, and, in fact, the only real developments on the opposition side worth talking about. Here's some snapshot of the rallies that already took place:

— Murmansk (photos / video)

— Yekaterinburg (photos / video)

— Omsk (photos / video)

— Novosibirsk (photos / video)

— Vladivostok (photos / video)

— Khabarovsk (photos / video)