Thousands rally against Russian govt

More than 2,000 people held a rare anti-government rally in Moscow on today, accusing the Kremlin of growing authoritarianism and protesting against electoral law changes.

Authorities, however, pulled opposition activists off buses and trains, and hundreds were detained to prevent them from attending, activists said.

The members of leftist and liberal groups who made it through rallied in a central Moscow square, demanding that President Vladimir Putin and his government stop what the demonstrators called democratic backsliding. They also called on opposition forces to unite before upcoming elections.

“In 15 months, political power will be changed,” said former Primer Minister and potential presidential candidate Mikhail Kasyanov, who now heads an opposition group and is a fierce Kremlin critic, referring to the March 2008 presidential vote.

“Next year, everyone should make a personal decision about what to do with our country – whether we allow these people to continue their illegal undertakings ... or we finally make our main goal to build a democratic ... state,” Kasyanov told demonstrators.

Garry Kasparov, a former chess grandmaster and another vocal Kremlin opponent, said the very fact that the opposition rally took place was a success.

“We are protesting and it means that authorities are not as monolithic and powerful,” he said. “They are afraid that one day we will tell them ‘enough’.”

The demonstrators chanted “Freedom” and held banners reading “No to Police State” and “Russia Without Putin”.

Since he took office in 2000, Putin has taken gradual steps to centralise power and eliminate democratic checks and balances. He has created an obedient parliament, abolished direct gubernatorial elections, tightened restrictions on rights groups and presided over the reining in of non-state TV channels. This month, a measure scrapping minimum turnout requirements for elections to be considered valid went into effect.

The demonstration, organised by several opposition groups who joined forces in the Other Russia movement, had originally planned to march down a main Moscow avenue in what was dubbed the “March of Those Who Disagree,” but city authorities banned the march, allowing only a rally instead.

Organisers had vowed to go-ahead with the march despite the ban, but the activists ended up only holding a demonstration and the crowd began dispersing after 1pm Moscow time, over an hour into the event.

The march did not take place because police and defence troops had sealed off the square and the street the activists planned to march on was lined with dozens of detention trucks and water cannon machines, said Natalya Morar, a spokesman for Other Russia.

An AP photographer saw more than 1,000 law enforcement officers in full riot gear, some with police dogs, cordoning off Triumfalnaya Square, where the rally was held. Moscow residents complained the city was flooded with police troops.

Morar also said about 80 protesters, including Ivan Starikov, a senior member of the liberal Union of Right Forces, were detained in Moscow throughout the day. Some 320 other opposition activists were detained or removed from trains and buses on their way to Moscow.

Some were kept in detention cells, others were released after the rally was over, Morar said.

Some 8,500 law enforcement officers were deployed in the city on Saturday, Moscow police spokesman Yevgeny Gildeyev said. He could not provide a number of detained opposition activists.

Russia’s beleaguered and often fractious opposition has faced increased harassment in recent years, with protest meetings barred on suspicious legal grounds or party congresses broken up or cancelled for no reason.