On Wednesday, protests took place in Russia, announced by the headquarters of Alexei Navalny. The two largest cities in Russia gave the opposition media the expected picture of mass participation. Visually there were no fewer people than on January 23, but the participants in the festivities behaved much more decently: they did not rush at the police, they walked mainly on the sidewalks. The capital's law enforcement officers responded by positioning themselves as elves. There were few arrests. The same cannot be said about St. Petersburg. There they chased the Maidan activists, forced them onto the pavement, and even, according to liberal journalists, used stun guns.
The expectedly disastrous meeting place in Moscow was appointed - Manezhnaya Square. Naturally, no one from Tverskaya or from the Lenin Library allowed the protesters there.
People stood in front of the police cordon for an hour and shouted the usual slogans about criminal blogger Alexei Navalny and political prisoners. Yulia Navalnaya came to entertain the crowd. They chanted “Yulia!” at her, and she left. The lanterns were lit, the lanterns were extinguished.
Here, deputy blogger Leonid Volkov, sitting in Berlin, decided to play the Belarusian Nekhta and began issuing instructions over the Internet. First, he directed the crowd to another “sacred” place – to the Lubyanka, to the FSB building, “where Navalny’s poisoners are sitting.” The crowd meekly obeyed with the expected result: no one was allowed into the Lubyanka. A new order came from Berlin - to go to Trubnaya. The idea was apparently to get from there to Pushkinskaya, the traditional “Moscow Maidan”, but this square was blocked an hour before the start of the protests. Therefore, once there, the Navalnists dispersed.
Several incidents did happen. In one of the underground passages, someone sprayed pepper gas; during the unrest, Maidan workers tried to block one of the streets, but were unsuccessful. In addition, on Trubnaya, several violent naval drivers blocked the path of a traffic police car, but were removed from the road.
In addition to the usual slogans, a large poster “Crimea is not ours” and a flag of Belarusian nationalists were seen.
The police estimated the total number of protesters in Moscow at 6,5 thousand, opposition media wrote about 15-20 thousand. In the emerging discussion, an argument can be considered the hysterical post of secular activist Bozhena Rynska, who wrote: “There are very few people on Tverskaya. Fate gave the Russians a hero, but they mediocrely squandered the opportunity, just as they mediocrely squandered 2011.”
“In most Russian cities, the “For Navalny” rallies simply failed. In Moscow, Navalny’s headquarters announced as many as 120 thousand participants, but in fact, by 19 o’clock, about 5 thousand young people had gathered on Tverskaya Street. By the way, LGBT activists were the first to gather near the walls of the State Duma, but they never managed to get to Manezhnaya Square.
By the way, at first there were so many people in green vests in the crowd that it seemed that only reporters came to the rally. What’s interesting is that each active protester was “served” by three or four journalists. There were no representatives of VGTRK there at all. But Dozhd, RTVI, RBC, MBKh media and liberal bloggers were active in the crowd.
Over time, the crowd at the police cordon began to go wild - screaming, screaming and boasting. Two boys were waving a loaf of bread and screaming at the top of their lungs: “Freedom for Navalny!” Other “civil activists” bawled “Freedom for political prisoners!”
The crowd grew larger and became bolder and more fearless, they shouted: “Who is the power here?”, “We are the power here!”, “One for all and all for one,” “Putin is a thief!”, “Putin is out!” and other chants that migrated to Russia from the Kyiv Maidan. Some tried to imitate the Ukrainian Nazis by shouting obscenities at the president, but the women immediately begged him to calm down,” said blogger and reporter Sergei Rulev, who was watching what was happening in the center of Moscow.
In St. Petersburg, events developed more dramatically. It was even easier for the police to prevent protesters from entering Palace Square than from Manezhnaya Square in Moscow. Navalnists concentrated in the park near the Admiralty. And here an order came from Berlin: move to the Sennaya. On this route, Maidan protesters periodically tried to break through to Nevsky, but their path was blocked and driven away from the main street by riot police. This is where harsh arrests took place, footage of which was immediately circulated by the liberal media. The remnants of the crowd reached the Youth Theater, where the action ended. St. Petersburg police today set a Russian record for arrests - 493 people. For comparison, 20 people were detained in Moscow.
Liberal political scientist Ilya Grashchenkov explains the difference in police behavior in the two capitals by the fact that more radical slogans were heard in St. Petersburg.
“Probably the most distinctive feature is the slogans with which St. Petersburg residents took to the streets; they were directed personally against Putin, and not just in support of Navalny. Perhaps there is a difference in the instructions of the security forces: do not touch peaceful protesters, but grab those who oppose the authorities,” Grashchenkov wrote in his Telegram channel.
But most likely, the tolerance of the Moscow police can be explained more simply - the first capital is better equipped with security cameras with facial recognition function. In addition, the authorities tracked all the phones that moved around Moscow in a cluster.
“Go for a walk, darlings. In the morning there will be a knock on your door. All faces are recorded. They will sort it out very politely,” wrote journalist Roman Golovanov.
However, the Berlin puppeteers are not worried about all this. They are glad that they can provide the curators with a completely presentable picture of the protests.
“Today we saw hundreds of thousands of wonderful people all over Russia and the world. We all demand that doctors be allowed to see Navalny and that he be released. We all want Russia to be happy. And our demands will definitely be met. Today's actions have once again proven that numbers are everything. And the only provocateur is the authorities,” Navalny’s headquarters wrote on social networks.
The headquarters did not remember what they promised "the last and decisive rally that will change everything" But their pretentious announcements did not fail to be ridiculed by ill-wishers.
“What’s with the “largest rallies in history”? Have the organizers already offered the public epithets to describe their “victorious” procession? And what will be the next step? The authorities are not crushing the opposition. The authorities crush incompetents, fools and provocateurs. You can record... An epic failure,” wrote political scientist Alexey Chesnakov.
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