Russia’s Anti-Putin Flame Still Burns Despite Winter’s Big Freeze

Jakarta Globe, February 05, 2012

A rally in Moscow on Saturday against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
urged the Russian leader to quit power.  (AFP Photo/Kirill Kudryavtsev)

               

Related articles

• Russians Should Skip Protest Due to Cold: Chief Doctor
• After Briefly Allowing Media Freedom, Putin Turns the Screws Again
• Russia Allows New Mass Anti-Putin Protest: Official
• US Ambassador Parries Russian Attacks
• Russian Stars Launch ‘Voters’ League’ to Fight Fraud

Moscow. The budding movement against Vladimir Putin’s grip on power has kept its momentum a month ahead of Russia’s presidential polls after its latest rally repeated the success of previous protests despite freezing temperatures, analysts said.

Bundled up in down jackets, sheepskin coats and felt boots, protesters turned up on Saturday for their third rally since fraud-tainted December elections in defiance of government calls to ignore the protest and after a long New Year’s break.

“It is important that the number of people is not going down despite the cold and the fact that this is already their third rally,” said Maria Lipman, editor at the US-funded Pro et Contra journal. “People’s convictions are only growing stronger.”

Incensed by widespread claims of fraud in December’s parliamentary elections, tens of thousands of people gathered in Moscow on Dec. 10 and Dec. 24 in the largest protests of Putin’s 12-year rule as president and prime minister.

The organizers had worried that the protest movement was in danger of fizzling out and popular anger over claims of fraud may subside two months after the parliamentary polls.

But they said the turnout exceeded expectations, pledging to hold a smaller protest before the March 4 presidential election and another mass rally soon after it.

“There is absolutely no feeling that the protest movement is fizzling out,” said Sergei Parkhomenko, one of the organizers. “The Kremlin had hoped it would go away, but it’s not going away. It will continue after elections.”

While police put the number of protesters at the anti-Putin rally at Bolotnaya Square called through social networks at around 36,000, the organizers said some 120,000 people turned up.

Authorities made a series of calls to discourage Russians from joining the protest and staged a rival rally, bussing scores of ordinary Russians to the Poklonnaya Gora War Memorial Park.

Police said 138,000 were in attendance, but a correspondent at the scene said the numbers appeared to have been exaggerated.

Complaints multiplied ahead of the pro-Putin rally, organized by authorities and Kremlin-friendly trade unions, that employees of state companies were offered cash incentives or even ordered to attend the protest.

A nurse from a hospital in the Moscow suburb of Zelenograd said colleagues were offered 3,000 rubles ($100) to attend the pro-Putin rally and 15 agreed to go.

Analysts said authorities, who wanted to show that Putin’s backers far outnumbered Putin’s opponents, risked alienating sincere supporters.

“This protest will come back to haunt him,” said Yuliy Nisnevich, a political science professor at the Higher School of Economics. “People were being pressured, humiliated and they will hold a grudge,” he continued, adding that many of those who attended the pro-Putin rally might later join the opposite camp.

Nikolai Petrov, an analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center, noted that by pulling out all the stops to stage the pro-Putin protest, authorities were sending a signal that a rally was a “way to solve political problems.”

“Authorities are rocking the boat themselves,” he said.

Observers stressed that the nascent protest movement should ramp up its efforts and mobilize greater numbers if it hoped to mount a serious challenge to Putin.

“All these rallies, they are not a wave yet but a forerunner,” Nisnevich said. “There’s no energy yet that will wash away this regime.”

Grigory Yavlinsky of the liberal Yabloko party, who was disqualified on procedural grounds from standing in the presidential elections, told the protest rally that Putin’s biggest test would come after the ballot.

“Life does not end on March 4 or even 5,” he said to cheers from the crowds. “Everything is just beginning. We will never retreat.”

Agence France-Presse