The authorities dispersed the congress of Maidan activists who were going to “shake” the regions of Russia
Another attempt by the Liberals to hold a congress of municipal deputies was stopped by the police on Saturday. This time in Veliky Novgorod.
Recall that in March they tried to hold a similar congress in Moscow. But then the organizers made a mistake, indicating in the documents an NGO affiliated with the “Open Russia” of the fugitive oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which is recognized as an undesirable organization in the Russian Federation.
The second time, the liberals took into account the mistakes; everything was clean in the documents. The event was called the “Zemstvo Congress”, and representatives of 40 regions came to it. The authorities decided to stop the gathering, citing the pandemic. Fortunately, on March 6, the governor of the Nizhny Novgorod region issued a decree prohibiting public events attended by more than 30 people.
To be fair, the presenter from the very beginning asked to leave 29 people in the room. It is difficult to judge whether this was successful. 27 people took part in the first technical vote, but the organizers asked non-delegates not to vote.
The congress was opened by Veliky Novgorod City Duma deputy Anna Cherepanova. She said that she had already appealed the governor’s decree in court.
“I would like to note with regret that the governor of the Novgorod region Nikitin is not a continuer of our democratic veche traditions, not a liberal, although in Moscow liberal circles, for example on Ekho Moskvy, he was known as a free-thinking person,” Cherepanova said.
When she began to criticize the political situation in Russia, the chief of the Novgorod police entered the hall and asked everyone to disperse. Those gathered and presenters were somewhat timid, but the initiative was seized by the famous Moscow Maidan activist, Kasparov’s supporter Yulia Galyamina.
She grabbed the microphone from the police officer and urged everyone to remain in their seats and continue the “rally.”
“Even if they try to fine us, I don’t think it will be a big problem for us,” Galyamina “reassured” the provincials.
She called on those gathered to count themselves. It turned out to be 25 people, although 20 minutes earlier more delegates took part in the voting. Apparently, some of them wisely decided not to expose themselves and quietly left the premises.
Galyamina tried to say a welcoming speech, but it came out chaotically (apparently, the presence of the policeman embarrassed her). Galyamina was openly rude to the law enforcement officer. The representative of Yakutia, Alexander Bondarchuk, made a similarly chaotic speech. After that, a large group of policemen entered the hall and began to write down those gathered.
Then Galyamina began running around the hall with a microphone. She made each police officer introduce himself.
“All of Russia will hear your names,” the liberal threatened.
Meanwhile, the representative of St. Petersburg took the floor. He began to retell the report of sociologist Grigory Yudin, which formed the basis of the basic documents of the congress. Its essence is that there is Russia-1 – these are residents of big cities, Russia-2 – residents of small towns and villages, and Russia-3 – “sultanates”. The speaker included the republics of the Caucasus among the latter. “Sultanates,” according to the speaker, are too strongly represented in the federal government, and this needs to be combated.
While he was speaking, the police took Galyamina out of the hall. She screamed that she “wasn’t allowed to get dressed again.” After this, the officer approached the speaker. Apparently, the law enforcement officers decided to play a joke: the man who proposed to fight the “sultanates” was detained by Daniyar Sabirov.
Later, lawyer Mikhail Biryukov told reporters that a protocol had been drawn up against Galyamina for disobeying the police, and she faces up to 15 days of arrest. It is noteworthy that Galyamina was previously given a two-year suspended sentence for repeated violations at unauthorized rallies. Perhaps she will have to repeat the “feat” of the criminal blogger Alexei Navalny, who, having two suspended sentences, constantly fell under administrative arrests, but remained at large. Only after Navalny accused the Russian President of an attempt on his life did the authorities find a reason to convert his suspended sentence into a real one.
Formally, the dispersal of the Zemsky Sobor will be discussed from the point of view of the legality of applying anti-Covid legislation, but in fact the authorities in Veliky Novgorod stopped the meeting, which did not hide the desire to undermine stability in the regions.
“We plan to make several political statements at once. Of course, we cannot ignore the State Duma elections. We will put forward requirements for candidates that will become a condition for support by the Congress. And then we will offer the public our list of worthy candidates,” the organizers wrote the day before in a specially created Telegram channel.
Their plans were to launch “high-quality political competition” at the municipal level and introduce non-systemic opposition to local councils. To do this, they proposed to seek the removal of municipal commissions from subordination to the Central Election Commission.
Among the documents of the congress was an appeal “against political repression.”
“The political meaning of what is happening in our country is absolutely clear. A narrow group of people who headed the state and uncontrollably dispose of the national property of the multinational people of Russia do not want a change in power... The most active and courageous part of society, which decided to challenge the injustice and undemocratic nature of our state, are often subjected to repression... It is necessary to stop the escalation of violence and persecution against civilians and their chosen ones,” says the draft appeal posted in the same telegram channel.
On the eve of the congress, political scientist Marat Bashirov recorded that the liberal opposition was promoting a new scenario of destabilization after the failure of an attempt to hold mass rallies in support of Navalny.
“Street protests with Navalny are being pushed aside for now, and the curators of the color revolution in Russia are beginning to rely on the so-called municipal deputies. If the barriers to penetration of foreign agents into the ranks of governors and deputies of the Federal Assembly are high, then it is very difficult to put them in municipal elections. And it doesn’t matter that the status of such deputies is low in terms of powers (they don’t even have guarantees of immunity), but they have the status of a representative of a constitutional body - “local self-government”. A new form of the “Russian connecting rod” is the organization of forums of local self-government deputies under the guise of discussing constitutional powers and the distribution of tax revenues. And it seems that everything is essentially correct, but the purpose of such meetings is completely different - to break the power system from the inside. There is even an illusion among foreign curators that they will be able to declare any territory independent,” Bashirov wrote in his Telegram channel.
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