Russians sought out the first signs of change Sunday after tens of thousands rallied across the country and swarmed Moscow in the biggest ever show of defiance against Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule. Saturday’s historic demonstrations near the Kremlin saw more than 50,000 chant “Russia without Putin” and deride his ruling party for its narrow victory in December 4 elections that were alleged to have been riddled with fraud.
The show of public anger was unprecedented for a city that emerged from the tumultuous 1990s as the birthplace of the “managed democracy” system that Putin set up across Russia on his rise to the presidency in 2000. Putin stayed out of the public limelight while his spokesman issued a carefully-worded statement referring to “a democratic protest by a section of the population” that did not represent the country as a whole.
“We respect the point of view of the protesters. We are hearing what is being said and we will continue to listen to them,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in the overnight statement.
Meanwhile, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday he disagreed with demands made at nationwide protests over the weekend for a rerun of disputed legislative polls.
‘I disagree with the slogans and declarations made at the meetings,’ news agencies quoted Medvedev as saying in his first public remarks on Saturday’s demonstrations in Moscow and other major Russian cities. He also ordered an investigation into allegations of violations.
Scenes similar to those seen Saturday in Moscow were also replayed on a smaller scale across the industrial hubs of Siberia and the Urals – a sign that Putin’s path back may be more fraught than it appeared just a week ago.
“Right now there is actually a chance for us to change something,” said 44-year-old Anna Bekhmentova as the demonstrators chanted “No to a police state!” and tied the protest movement’s white ribbons to their winter jackets in Moscow. The opposition to Putin meanwhile is expanding beyond a narrow base of veteran liberals and far-right nationalists to attract popular cultural figures with broad appeal such as detective story writer Boris Akunin.
“I have not seen Moscow like this for 20 years,” Akunin told the Moscow crowd. State television – scorned by the Internet community for its blanket ban on coverage of post-election unrest – took the unusual step Saturday evening of leading its news programme with Moscow rally coverage. And the official RIA Novosti news agency wrote a special analysis entitled “Saturday’s protests should convince the authorities to listen to the voice of the people.”
Some in the Russian opposition interpreted this as an early sign of change while a Kremlin said that the decision to run the mostly-balanced reports was taken personally by Medvedev. The Kremlin source added that Medvedev had also instructed the Moscow police to handle the protesters “extremely gently” after seeing more than 1,000 activists bundled away by riot police the previous week.
