Today’s rally, the first since the bloody showdown of last Saturday, brought out clear battle lines. On the
one side were the protesters with their demands for free and fair elections. On the other side, the
authorities who have warned against a revolutionary scenario.
In the days leading up to the march, authorities tried several tools to minimise turnout. There were the
warnings of violence and immediate arrest. Threats to round up young men dodging military service. And a
music and food concert – though apparently organised without first securing the agreement of headliners.
Much of central Moscow was on lockdown ahead of the start at 2pm local time. Cafes and shops near the
city’s Boulevard ring, the route of the march, were shuttered on the advice of authorities. Mobile internet
was also down over much of the central district. Helicopters circled the skies above; and thousands of
uniformed officers, the streets below.
Officers detain a woman during yesterday’s
rally (AP)The arrests came as promised, but initially at a much lower level than a week ago. Police tactics seemed to
concentrate on kettling protestors into blocks along the protest route. More forceful arrests came later in
the day.
Four hours into the march, OVD-Info, the NGO watchdog that provides legal assistance to the arrested,
reported that 600 people had been taken into police custody. Most of the arrested were detained at
Pushkinskaya, Trubnaya or Kropotkinskaya, three main squares along the route. Igor Kalyapin, a prominent
anti-torture activist and a member of Vladimir Putin’s official Council on Human Rights, was one of those
taken away in a police van.
Working from a secret location in central Moscow, OVD-Info volunteers manning legal hotlines told The
Independent that the proportion of minors arrested was likely higher than at the last rally.
But their main worry concerned a change in the way prosecutors were handling the arrests. For the first
time since 2016, state investigators were being sent directly to police stations, said Grigory Durnovo, OVD-
Info’s monitoring coordinator. That, he said, indicated that authorities planned to open criminal cases the
same day.
“If they begin pre-trial interrogations, it will be impossible to get lawyers in,” he said.
Lyubov Sobol was driven around the city for several hours before surfacing at a police station near Vnukovo
airport in southeastern Moscow. There, she was charged with repeated violations of protest law. Late
yesterday evening, a judge fined her a maximum 300,000 rubles (£3,800).
Speaking with The Independent, Ms Sobol predicted Moscow’s political crisis would continue to grow.
“There is no prospect of Putin improving the situation,” she said. “Putin knows what Russian society wants,