MOSCOW - Radical leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov Thursday was sentenced to 10 days in jail for defying police during a protest against Vladimir Putin’s win in Russia’s presidential elections, his wife said. “Udaltsov has been given 10 days of jail time,” Anastasia Udaltsova, who is also the spokeswoman for the Left Front group Udaltsov heads, wrote on Twitter. She said he would go on hunger strike to protest the sentence. Udaltsov’s lawyer Nikolai Polozov, speaking on Echo of Moscow radio, said he planned to appeal the sentence on Friday. Udaltsov, who served several short jail terms last year for taking part in protests against Putin’s 12-year rule, is a vocal leader of the country’s nascent protest movement.
Putin, currently prime minister, secured a crushing victory in the March 4 presidential polls. He will be sworn in for his third term as president on May 7.
Putin’s victory in the election with over 63 percent of the vote was widely seen as a blow to the budding protest movement which is now losing momentum.
Another leader of the protest movement, Alexei Navalny, said earlier this week that police had summoned him and his colleagues on his anti-corruption blog for questioning.