moscow protest - thousands rally against vladimir putin - huge crowds packed central moscow for one...

8/3/2019 Moscow Protest - Thousands Rally Against Vladimir Putin - Huge Crowds Packed Central Moscow for One of the Big

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Moscow protest: Thousands rally against Vladimir Putin - Huge crowds packed

central Moscow for one of the biggest protests in years

In pictures: Russian ralliesMedvedev urges bold Russia reformPutin accepts 'lawful' protestsVIDEO - Moscow ProtestRAW VIDEO - Anti-corruption Protests Across Russia

BBC News- 24 December 2011 Last updated at 12:18 ET - Tens of thousands of peoplehave rallied in central Moscow in a show of anger at alleged electoral fraud.

They passed a resolution "not to give a single vote to Vladimir Putin" at next year'spresidential election.

Protest leader Alexei Navalny told the crowd to loud applause that Russians would nolonger tolerate corruption.

"I see enough people here to take the Kremlin and [Government House] right now butwe are peaceful people and won't do that just yet," he said.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFX4GNEHcX4http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OFX4GNEHcX4http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16324644http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16324644http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16194084http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16194084http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16299093http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16299093http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16325761http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16325761


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Demonstrators say parliamentary elections on 4 December, which were won by MrPutin's party, were rigged. The government denies the accusation.

A sea of demonstrators stretched along Sakharov Avenue, a few miles from the Kremlin,

in sub-zero temperatures.

Rallies were taking place across Russia, with the first big protest in the far eastern cityof Vladivostok.

We are peaceful people but we can't put up with this forever ~ Alexei Navalny - Protestleader.

At least 28,000 people turned out in the capital, according to the Russian interiorministry, but rally organisers said the true number was around 120,000.

President Dmitry Medvedev announced political reforms this week, but manydemonstrators say it is not enough.

They are demanding a re-run of the poll, which was won by Vladimir Putin's party - butwith a much smaller share of the overall vote.

Mr Putin poured scorn on protesters during a recent live chat on Russian TV, callingthem "Banderlog" after the lawless monkeys in The Jungle Book, and likening theirprotest symbol, a white ribbon, to a condom.

However he also said protesters had the right to demonstrate if they kept within the law.

'We're the power'.

In Moscow, many protesters clutched white balloons and banners with the slogan "ForFree Elections" while some mocked Mr Putin with images of condoms, to the extent thatthe first speaker, music journalist Artyom Troitsky, dressed himself up as one.

At the scene - Steve Rosenberg - BBC News, Moscow - Sakharov Avenue is packedwith protesters - tens of thousands of people who have taken to the streets to demandfresh parliamentary elections and much of their anger is directed at Vladimir Putin.

There are placards declaring "don't vote for Putin in the presidential elections", and

many in the crowd are blowing red whistles - their attempt to blow the whistle on MrPutin's decade in power.

The large turnout today will keep up the pressure on the Kremlin. The authorities havealready promised limited political reforms but so far they have shown no intention ofcancelling the results of the recent parliamentary vote which is widely believed to havebeen rigged in favour of Vladimir Putin's party.


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The resolution passed at Saturday's rally built on demands expressed at an earlier rallyin Moscow on 10 December.

Another new point was a call for the creation of a new election monitoring body - theMoscow Voters' Association - to investigate ballot-rigging.

Mr Navalny, a prominent anti-corruption blogger who was jailed for 15 days over a streetprotest just after the elections, greeted the crowd with the words "Greetings to theBanderlog from the net hamsters [internet activists]".

Condemning Russia's leaders as "swindlers and thieves", he listed victims of injusticeincluding imprisoned former tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky and anti-corruption lawyerSergei Magnitsky, who died in custody.

"Who's the power here?" he shouted to cries of "We are" from the crowd.He promised that the next protest rally would be a "million strong".

Alexei Kudrin, who recently resigned after serving a decade as Mr Putin's financeminister, was booed when he took the microphone to call for early parliamentaryelections and urge a dialogue between the Kremlin and the opposition.

"There needs to be a platform for dialogue, otherwise there will be a revolution and welose the chance that we have today for a peaceful transformation," he said.

Moscow protesters' resolution:

Free all political prisoners and those unjustly convicted

Cancel the results of the fabricated elections

Sack and investigate election commission chief Vladimir Churov

Register all political parties and reform electoral law before March election

Hold new, open and honest elections

Create a Moscow Voters' Association to investigate ballot-rigging

Ask all Russians "not to give a single vote to Vladimir Putin" on 4 March

A total of 22 speakers were lined up for the Moscow rally, with rival opposition figuresaddressing a crowd which mixed liberals with nationalists.

In a video message, Russian rock musician Yury Shevchuk urged protesters to maintaintheir dignity and avoid "competing in hatred for the authorities"


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Billionaire and Putin election challenger Mikhail Prokhorov had been expected toaddress the rally but stayed in the crowd, saying he had heard presidential candidateswere "not supposed to speak".

Another presidential candidate, veteran liberal Grigory Yavlinsky, did speak, and called

for a free electoral system.

Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, 80, did not attend after all, sending a messageof support instead. He later told Moscow Echo radio that Mr Putin should not stand foranother term in office.

Saturday's rally in Moscow ended peacefully, with the last speaker a Grandfather Frost(Russian Santa Claus) figure who wished citizens of a "free Russia" a Happy New Year.

"People were scared before the first big demonstration on 10 December," protesterAndrei Luzhin told AFP news agency.

"Now they no longer have fear."

Lack of leader

Some 50,000 people rallied on 10 December, in what was then the biggest anti-government protest since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

In St Petersburg's Pioneer Square, the Just Russia party called for a rerun of theparliamentary elections.

On Thursday, Mr Medvedev proposed to hold direct elections of regional governors andsimplify the procedure for registering political parties, but protesters say theconcessions do not go far enough, the BBC's Steve Rosenberg in Moscow says.

However, one of the main problems for the opposition is that there is no single leaderable to unite it, our correspondent adds.

Rallies against ballot-rigging were reported across Russia's time zones, though nonewere on the same scale as that in Moscow.

In Vladivostok, demonstrators carried posters calling for Mr Putin to be put on trial and

regional MP Artyom Samsonov said the election results should be cancelled.

In the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, a rally of between 800 and 1,500 people passed offpeacefully.

About 100 people braved a frost of -15C in Orenburg on the border with KazakhstanAbout 500 people rallied in Chelyabinsk in the southern Urals under the slogan "Theseelections were a farce! We want honest elections"


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Several arrests were made in St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin's home city, where tworallies were held, reportedly attended by a total of about 2,500 people

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16324644

Russian anti-Putin protests drawthousands to Moscow againOpposition activists claim 80,000 attend demonstration over vote-rigging claims, as Gorbachev calls on Putin to resignMiriam Elderand Tom Parfitt in Moscow guardian.co.uk, Saturday 24 December2011 12.14 EST
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Demonstrators gather to protest against election fraud claims, in Moscow. Photograph:Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP

Tens of thousands have taken to the streets of Moscow to protest againstallegedly fraudulent elections, as opposition leaders issued scathingpersonal attacks on Vladimir Putin in the hope of preventing his return tothe presidency next year.

Mikhail Gorbachev has urged Putin to follow his own example and stepdown. Former leader Gorbachev said on Ekho Moskvy radio that if Putinstepped down now he would be remembered for the positive things he didduring his 12 years in power.

Security sources said 80,000 people turned out for the four hour protest onMoscow's Sakharov Prospect, despite a freezing temperature of -5C.Police put the number at 29,000 while protest organisers said up to120,000 had gathered.

Protesters waved banners, let fly balloons and called for Putin's ouster inthe biggest protest yet against the powerful leader's rule.

"I see enough people here to take the Kremlin or White House right now!"opposition leader Alexey Navalny told the crowd.
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"But we are a peaceful force we won't do that, for now. But if these crooksand thieves continue to try to cheat us, to try to lie and steal from us, wewill take [what's rightfully ours] by ourselves."

The protest, on a wide avenue named after leading Soviet dissident Andrei

Sakharov, dwarfed a similar protest held two weeks ago. While that crowdwas largely young and middle class, Saturday's protest also gathered manypensioners and first-time protesters, indicating that anti-governmentsentiment was growing.

"Russia can't go on like this," said Alexei Frolov, 26, a clothing shopmanager. "Putin should stand aside; he looks out of touch with reality."

Frolov said he voted against the United Russia party in the early Decemberparliamentary vote and became angry after seeing videos of ballot boxstuffing online.

"When I looked at the crowds going to the first protests, I saw they were notcattle, but normal, happy people who just wanted to defend their rights. Sothis time I decided to come too."

Speakers issued attacks on Putin and called on voters to prevent hiselection in a 4 March presidential vote. A further protest was planned forafter the long New Year's holiday.

"We are the 99%," Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov said in a videomessage broadcast to the crowd. Udaltsov has been repeatedly jailed forminor offences in what his supporters say is a campaign to keep him off thestreets. "The 1% are Kremlin bandits, criminal oligarchs, corrupted officialsand other bastards."

Referring to Putin and Dmitry Medvedev, the president, he said: "Theleadership these tandem dwarves is deathly dangerous for Russia."

Although able to unite a huge crowd against Putin, opposition leaders havestruggled to unify around a concrete figure, although Navalny, recentlyreleased from jail following his participation in Russia's first post-electionprotest, was best able to rouse the crowd and has proven popular amongmany in the Moscow elite despite his nationalist views.

The oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov, who has received Kremlin approval to runfor president as a relatively liberal candidate against Putin, showed up at
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the protest but did not address the crowd. Alexei Kudrin, a longtime Putinally and former finance minister, made an unexpected appearance and

joined the call for new elections.

"We believe that next year power will change peacefully and power will

belong to who it should," Navalny said. "We warn that we will go out intothe streets until they return what belongs to us. We are peaceful people butwe can't be patient indefinitely."

Medvedev has attempted to appease the protesters by offering a packageof election reforms and permitting them to gather. The police presence inMoscow was minimal on Saturday, although a helicopter hovered overprotesters' heads.

Medvedev, due to leave the presidency after the March vote and long seenas being in Putin's shadow, was not a target for most protesters. Theyinstead turned their wrath toward Putin. Several protesters carriedcondoms in reference to Putin's insult their protest symbol a white ribbon

resembled contraceptives. Some were inflated and held like balloons,others dangled limply from coats or posters. Others held aloft posterscomparing Putin to Muammar Gaddafi and Kim Jong-il.

Natalya Dikashvili, a 30-year-old advertising agency owner, stood aloneholding a white rose and the orange flag that is the symbol of Solidarity, an

umbrella liberal opposition organisation. "I don't know a single person whovoted for United Russia but the official result said they got almost 50%,"she said. "We need clean, honest elections so that there is a real choice.We need fairness."

What response would satisfy her from Putin and the ruling elite? "That theywould all go away so that we can start again,"she said.

Yelena Savrayeva, 42, the director of a publishing firm, had a white ribbonpinned to her jacket and a sticker on her back reading: "The state

department of the USA doesn't pay me, I pay taxes in the RussianFederation."

She said: "I'm for honest elections, for a lawful state. I want politics to bepolyphony, not monotone. It's the cynicism and the silliness of the rulingpower that I can't stand any more."

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/24/russia-europe-news
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