The Observer - 04.08.2019

Section:OBS 2N PaGe:15 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 18:00 cYanmaGentaYellowbla

• The Observer
  News 04.08.19 15

Is Russia ready

Young demonstrators were back on the streets yesterday demanding

political reforms. Shaun Walker in Moscow asks whether the protests

represent a serious threat to the increasingly unpopular Russian leader

O

n the terrace of a

recently renovated

market hall over-

looking Moscow’s

Trubnaya Square,

lounge music beats

played as well-dressed custom-

ers drank from bottles of craft beer

or cradled glasses of Aperol spritz.

Below them, as the concrete glowed

in the last rays of sunshine, hundreds

of riot police chased groups of young

people through the square and into

neighbouring streets, roughly bun-

dling those they caught into waiting

police vans. A booming voice from

a loudspeaker on one of the police

buses cut through the music on the

terrace, threatening the protest ers

with arrest.

The scene – played out last Saturday

as police met a protest about oppo-

Special

Report

sition access to the Moscow local

elections with the largest number

of arrests in recent Russian history

• was a striking distillation of the
  contra dictions of life under mayor
  Sergei Sobyanin , who in recent years
  has offered Muscovites an impres-
  sive programme of urban beauti-
  fication while keeping extremely

Continued overleaf

to defy Putin?

Riot police detain

a young protester

in Moscow

yesterday.

Photograph

by Alexander

Nemenov/Getty

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