Putin’s Opposition Leader’s Name Used By Moscow Residents To Get Snow Cleared

Residents of Moscow claim they found a solution to get council workers to clear snow — write the name of opposition leader Alexei Navalny on it.

They spray-painted Navalny’s name on the piled up snow after getting annoyed with the authorities for not clearing it, BBC reported. The action was posted by numerous people on social media where the plan garnered quite a lot of support. One social media user stated that the move resulted in an instant action from the council workers who cleared snow, thus removing the name, “within hours.”

Tatyana Grigoryeva, one of the members of a local residents’ group in the district of Nagorny, Moscow, said she was encouraged by the idea of journalist Mikhail Kozyrev, who suggested to write “Navalny” on the snow if the authorities didn’t remove it.

Grigoryeva also posted a video on Facebook which showed the effectiveness of the plan. The video showed two street cleaners removing the snow with shovels and also scraping Navalny’s name off the pavement.

She added in certain parts of the city, the snow was not removed and the council workers were mixing up the snow in order to hide Navalny’s name.

“They've managed to just mix it up with their shovels. I'll have to write it again,” she wrote in a Facebook post.

A post on the Facebook page of the residents’ group stated due to the action, the “district has become famous all over the country!” The post mentioned the reason for the district becoming famous was due to “the (inhuman) experiment of Tatyana Grigoryeva.”

It also went on to say although the residents’ group didn’t have any “high expectations” regarding the snow getting cleared, “the idiocy of the regional officials” didn’t fail them.

The post added, “The name ‘Navalny’ is not just a surname, but a spell that makes you work is known all over the country and even beyond its borders.”

BBC reported Moscow faced massive piles of snow this year, which was the result of one of the heaviest snowfall in the country in decades.

Navalny is believed to be the best critic of Putin and as a result, the state media never mentions the former by name. Even Putin refers to Navalny as “that person,” whenever he is asked about his vocal opposition, the report said.

Navalny, who is a lawyer and a political activist, became quite revered among the people for heading many protests and his criticism against top-level officials in the Putin regime. Due to these reasons, Navalny was subjected to attacks from Putin supporters. He almost lost vision in one eye after being attacked with an antiseptic green dye last year in Moscow.

The action of the residents was noticed by Navalny himself. In a blog post Monday, he described the action as “really funny,” adding he “laughed” when he saw it. Navalny wrote his “jaw dropped” after seeing the reports, and stressed the actions signaled “state insanity at people’s ‘service.’”