5 years after crackdown, anti-Kremlin protest resumes

MOSCOW — ProWestern liberals, hard-line nationalists, gay-rights activists and other Kremlin opponents gathered in central Moscow on Saturday, seeking to revive a broadbased protest movement against President Vladimir Putin that was snuffed out five years ago by mass arrests and stiff jail sentences. The demonstrators chanted the one demand that unites their disparate causes: “Russia Without Putin!”

Waving Russian flags and the black, yellow and white standard of the Russian empire, thousands of protesters from across the political spectrum held a noisy but good-natured rally to mark the fifth anniversary of a violent police crackdown that ended months of protests against Putin in 2011 and 2012.

The Ministry of Interior said only “around 1,000” people had taken part in the rally Saturday, which was held on a broad avenue named for the Soviet-era dissident Andrei Sakharov. The true number appeared to be several times larger, though not as large as the 10,000 people organizers had hoped would come. The Moscow city police reported no incidents.

OVD-Info, an independent group that tracks protest arrests, reported that at least seven people had been detained by the police at a separate gathering in Bolotnaya Square, the site of large anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2011 set off by public fury over falsified election results.

Unlike the nationwide demonstrations organized March 26 by anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny, the protest Saturday was approved by the authorities beforehand, and, while out in force, police officers and members of the Russian National Guard, an internal security force set up last year, did not try to disrupt the gathering. The crowd was also much older than the ones at Navalny’s rallies, which drew mostly youthful protesters in March.