Several thousand opposition demonstrators were allowed to hold a rally in the centre of Moscow on Monday, in an apparent change of tactics by the Kremlin, which has previously broken up anti-Putin rallies. The chess champion Gary Kasparov and his allies in Russia’s vocal opposition movement held the latest in a series of demonstrations on Monday against Vladimir Putin’s regime.
Around 2 000 people gathered in Moscow’s Pushkin Square. Protesters from The Other Russia — a coalition of opposition groups — waved flags and chanted ”Russia without Putin”.
They also sang: ”Imprison Putin in Magadan” — a joking reference to a forlorn and freezing former gulag town thousands of kilometres from Moscow. Others held red roses and pictures of the jailed oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky.
”There is no democracy in Russia. It’s a capitalist oligarchy,” said Stas Yurivich (19) a student.
”I’m here to protest about the fact that we have no free press in Russia. The opposition is relatively weak at the moment because most people prefer to sit at home and drink beer,” said Olga Andreyeva, a pensioner.
The protest came after a peaceful march and rally in St Petersburg on Saturday, coinciding with a major economic forum attended by hundreds of global business leaders and heads of state.
It was the first time that a demonstration led by Kasparov and his allies in a major Russian city has ended without police violence or interference. In April riot police arrested hundreds of opposition demonstrators after chasing them through central Moscow’s leafy boulevards, hitting several on the head.
Last month police prevented Kasparov from flying to another march in the Volga city of Samara, where an Eurpoean Union-Russia summit was being held — prompting icy exchanges between Putin and the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel.
Last week, however, Putin launched a vigorous defence of Russian democracy. During a meeting with British Prime Minister Tony Blair at the G8 summit in Germany, the Russian president insisted that ”all political parties and movements” would be allowed to take part in parliamentary and presidential elections this year and early next.
Putin delivered the same upbeat message to the United States President, George Bush, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said — following persistent criticism from senior White House officials about the deficiencies of Russian democracy and the Kremlin’s growing authoritarianism.
The atmosphere at Monday’s rally was less tense as the demonstration got under way. The square was surrounded by troops without helmets or visible batons instead of the usual helmeted riot police.
The Moscow authorities had granted organisers permission to protest at the site but not to parade down a main street, as they requested, raising the possibility of a police crackdown if demonstrators tried to march from the square.
The city authorities also stipulated that no more than 500 people could attend the rally, in a square in front of a McDonald’s restaurant and across the main Tverskaya Street from a statue of the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. But the authorities took no action despite the crowd being larger. During Saturday’s demonstration in St Petersburg several protesters marched through the city holding inflatable crocodiles — a symbol of defiance against the state inspired by a Russian children’s writer.
”Putin may claim Russia is a democracy. But the problem is, he says one thing and does another,” said Vladimir Volokhonsky, a lecturer at St Petersburg university. – Guardian Unlimited Â