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Russians Rally in Biggest Nationwide Protests Against Putin

By Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer - Dec 10, 2011


Prime Minister Vladimir Putin faced the biggest protests in his 12 years in power as Russians rallied across the country against election fraud.

Twenty-five thousand people gathered in the center of Moscow yesterday in near-freezing temperatures and dispersed after 6 p.m. without detentions or violence, police said. Several thousand demonstrated in St. Petersburg and more than 15,000 in about 30 other cities across the world’s biggest country by area, RIA Novosti reported.

The swelling resentment threatens to weaken Putin’s bid to return to the Kremlin in a presidential contest in March, which may allow him to have almost a quarter-century in power. His United Russia party retained a narrow majority in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, amid accusations of vote rigging in the Dec. 4 parliamentary ballot.

“We are for free elections, we are for democracy,” Ilya Ponomaryov, a Duma lawmaker and one of the protest organizers, told the crowd in Bolotnaya Square, on an island just south of the Kremlin. “We want a recount of the vote.”

As many as 150,000 people turned out for the biggest rally in the capital in two decades, said Vladimir Ryzhkov, a former lawmaker. The organizers are planning to stage protests the next two weekends and will apply for a permit to hold a 500,000- person rally on Sakharov Prospekt, he said.

‘Russia Without Putin’

Organizers handed out white ribbons to participants, a color that has started to become a symbol of the protests. People at the square chanted: “Russia without Putin!”

Putin, 59, announced in September he plans to return as president next year. The Russian leader, who in 2008 handed over the presidency to Dmitry Medvedev because of a constitutional ban on three consecutive terms, has seen his popularity fall amid voter discontent at stalling wage growth and corruption.

“I wanted Medvedev to run again as president instead of Putin but he turned out to be an actor in a puppet show,” Katya, 24, a dental technician, said while eating french fries at a diner on the west side of the square. She declined to give her surname, saying her father is a government official and a United Russia member.

Vladivostok, Omsk, St. Petersburg

Protests began earlier in Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, spreading west through Siberian cities such as Ulan Ude and Omsk, before starting in Moscow, St. Petersburg and other European Russian cities, RIA Novosti reported. Police detained dozens of people at unsanctioned rallies, the state news service said.

MORE - http://www.bloomberg.com/news/print/2011-12-10/russia-opposition-says-tens-of-thousands-to-rally-against-putin.html