THOUSANDS DEMONSTRATED ACROSS RUSSIA ON SUNDAY IN A NATIONWIDE SHOW OF DEFIANCE THAT HAS NOT SEEN IN YEARS.
Opposition leader among hundreds held
MOSCOW • A wave of unsanctioned rallies swept across Russia on Sunday to protest corruption in the government of President Vladimir Putin, in a nationwide show of defiance not seen in years, and one the Kremlin had tried in vain to prevent with bans and warnings.
Too angry to be cowed, they poured into the street, fed up with their country’s wide-reaching corruption and a government unwilling, or unable, to stop it. Police responded with barricades, tear gas and mass arrests in cities across Russia.
By Sunday evening, riot police in body armour and helmets hauled in more than 700 demonstrators in central Moscow, as the crowd, numbering in the tens of thousands, cheered and whistled and chanted, “Shame! Shame!”
One of the first detained in Moscow was the chief architect of the rallies, Alexei Navalny, who called on people to come to protest in the wake of his allegations that Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev has amassed vineyards, luxury yachts and lavish mansions worth more than $1 billion.
Authorities charged Navalny and other members of his Moscow-based Anticorruption Foundation with extremism; one of his group was charged with broadcasting the rally illegally. If that’s the case, a lot of people are going to be in trouble; thousands of iPhones recorded as police closed off central Pushkin Square, lined major streets and hauled anyone carrying signs into large buses.
On Friday, senior Russian police official Alexander Gorovoi warned that authorities would “bear no responsibility for any possible negative consequences” for people who do show up. Putin’s spokesman said that even telling people to come to the rallies was “illegal.”
Instead, the demonstrations appear to amount to the largest co-ordinated protests in Russia since the street rallies that broke out in 2011 and 2012 after a parliamentary election that opposition leaders decried as fraudulent.
The privately owned Interfax news agency reported on rallies across Siberia and in Russia’s Far East, where it said two dozen protesters had been detained. The agency cited police as saying about 7,000 protesters gathered in Moscow, but the crowd, which lined Moscow’s main artery, Tverskaya Street, on both sidewalks for almost two kilometres, and crammed the spacious Pushkin Square, appeared to be much larger than that.
For some time the protesters blocked the street, until Interior Ministry troops in combat gear pushed them off. A loudspeaker warned: “You are participants in an unsanctioned demonstration. Consider the consequences.”