Call for change in Russia
MOSCOW: Protests across Russia on Sunday marked the coming of age of a new adversary for the Kremlin: a generation of young people driven not by the need for stability that preoccupies their parents but by a yearning for change.
Thousands of people took to the streets across Russia, with hundreds arrested. Many were teenagers who cannot remember a time before Vladimir Putin took power 17 years ago.
‘‘I’ve lived all my life under Putin,’’ said Matvei, a 17yearold from Moscow, who said he came close to being detained at the protest on Sunday, but managed to run from the police.
‘‘We need to move forward, not constantly refer to the past.’’
A year before Putin is expected to seek a fourth term, the protests were the biggest since the last presidential election in 2012.
The driving force behind the protests was Alexei Navalny, a 40yearold anticorruption campaigner who uses the Inter net to spread his message, bypassing the statecontrolled television stations where nearly all older Russians get their news.
‘‘None of my peers watches television and they don’t trust it,’’ said Maxim, an 18yearold from St Petersburg who took part in a protest there.
Navalny, who was arrested at one of Sunday’s protests, tailors his message for YouTube and VKontakte, the Russian equivalent of Facebook.
It is still too early to say whether the new phenomenon will emerge as a serious challenge to Putin’s rule. It could be a burst of youthful idealism that fizzles out.
In any case, opinion polls show that Putin will win comfortably if, as most people expect, he runs for president next year.
His most serious rival for the presidency, Navalny, trails far behind in polls and could be barred from running because of an old criminal conviction which he says is political. — Reuters