Khodorkovsky's supporters failed to provoke unrest in Moscow
Moscow police convinced participants in the unauthorized “Fed up” protest to move away from the monument to the Heroes of Plevna and line up at the reception of the President of the Russian Federation. The queue is fenced off with light metal turnstiles, the kind that are usually placed at the entrance to a museum.
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According to Open Russia activist Maria Baronova, work in the reception area itself is well organized. Two girls are sitting at the reception of citizens' appeals; they are registering standard letters that Open Russia has been distributing in Moscow in recent days. Let us remind you that it says that Vladimir Putin should not run for president in 2018.
A good organization seems to have disappointed the host of the live broadcast on the Open Russia channel on Youtube. When the police appeared in the frame, running along the line, she joyfully shouted: “Oh, the movement has begun!”
But since nothing was happening, the presenter switched to St. Petersburg, where the police were making arrests. Within a minute, she stated that 15, then 50, then 100 people were detained.
As Mikhail Fedotov, the presidential adviser on human rights, explained, the organizers of the action initially wanted to hold a demonstration on Slavyanskaya Square. The authorities considered that the 10 thousand people announced by Open Russia would not fit there and proposed Sakharov Avenue as an alternative.
“I thought this place would suit everyone. The organizers said that they needed to forward the appeals to the President's reception. No problem either. The presidential administration could come there and place the ballot box. We asked the leadership of the Moscow Main Internal Affairs Directorate to organize everything so that there would be no incidents. Although in fact, they could have done this by email, requests are considered the same,” Fedotov said.
The organizers estimate the number of participants in the action in Moscow at one and a half thousand, the Kommersant publication at 400 people. Protests took place in a number of other Russian cities, but were few in number.
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