Financial Times: Anger at Moscow spills on to streets

Financial Times: Anger at Moscow spills on to streets

By Isabel Gorst in Moscow and Charles Clover in Kaliningrad

Published: March 21 2010 19:39 | Last updated: March 21 2010 19:39

Thousands of demonstrators in about a dozen cities across Russia took to the streets over the weekend to protest against the Kremlin’s authoritarian policies and falling living standards prompted by the sharp economic downturn.

Russian opposition groups declared Saturday a national protest day and dubbed it the “Day of Wrath” in an attempt to mobilise growing discontent. However, turnout was lower than hoped as authorities aimed to split the opposition, in most cases successfully.

In most cities authorities bribed, cajoled or threatened opposition leaders in an attempt to neutralise them. If that didn’t work, the riot police made short work of protesters. In Moscow, the most violent protest resulted in scuffles with police and 30 arrests.

The authorities were anxious to avoid a repeat of January’s protest in the Baltic city of Kaliningrad, where Russian leaders were taken by surprise by a 10,000-strong turnout, the largest anti-government protest in years.

In Kaliningrad at the weekend, the opposition split over whether to call an unsanctioned protest after authorities denied them a downtown location in which to rally. Recriminations flew as opposition leaders called off a planned march.

Vladimir Milov, a leader of the Moscow-based Solidarity group – who travelled to Kaliningrad to observe the events, said local opposition groups had “let down those people who want to protest”.

Even so, 1,000-2,000 protesters showed up on Saturday for a “flash mob” in a city parking lot, waving tangerines, which have become a symbol of opposition to the local governor, Georgy Boos. Protesters wore “No Boos” buttons, but the rain-drenched crowd quickly dispersed. Konstantin Doroshok, an opposition leader, said he was afraid of bloodshed. “No one ever threatened this directly, they would never do that. But they made it very clear there was a risk,” he said.

In an apparent attempt to assuage angry citizens, Mr Boos held a four-hour phone-in on Saturday, answering complaints, after which he met journalists for a combative press conference. He admonished demonstrators to “give the tangerines to needy children” and defended his government’s record, saying Russia’s government was as democratic as its western counterparts.

Rallies began in the Pacific port of Vladivostok, the scene of violent protests last year, where more than 1,000 people gathered in the snow to protest against restrictive taxes on car imports. In Irkutsk, a city in east Siberia, about 1,000 protesters complained about a decision by Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, to reopen a factory they say pollutes Lake Baikal. They cheered loudly as Boris Nemtsov, an opposition leader, called for Mr Putin to resign, Reuters reported.

In Moscow, 30 activists were arrested as police dispersed a demonstration in the city’s central Pushkin Square. Forty more demonstrators were detained at other rallies across the capital, Interfax reported, while motorists, protesting against car and road taxes, blocked part of the inner ring road.

Memorial, a human rights group, issued a complaint after the Moscow authorities refused to sanction a demonstration.

“This yet again shows that Russia does not observe the 31st statute of the constitution guaranteeing freedom of assembly,” it said.

The opposition, encouraged by the growing willingness of usually apathetic Russians to take to the streets, is planning more rallies in the coming weeks.

Nadezhda, a teacher who braved freezing rain to join the protests in Moscow, said: “Young people here have no future. This spring more and more people will come out on to the streets.”

Other protesters complained about the large police presence in the city, saying it was an infringement of their rights.

“This is a government of crooks protected by crooks,” shouted Lydia, an elderly pensioner, as police ordered her to leave Pushkin Square.

Independent: Miles from the Kremlin, protesters aim fruit and fury at Putin

Shaun Walker witnesses demonstrations in the Baltic exclave of Kaliningrad

Waving mandarins above their heads, and wearing surgical masks to denote the lack of free speech in Russia, they descended on Kaliningrad's central square in droves. They came despite the local government's offer of negotiations, and the driving rain sweeping in from the Baltic Sea.

For an hour on Saturday afternoon, some 5,000 protesters called loudly for the resignations of the local governor Georgy Boos and the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and bemoaned falling standards of living and the lack of democracy in the country.

The mandarins distributed among the crowd were a derogatory reference to Mr Boos, the Kremlin-appointed regional governor, apparently because he looks like he may have spent rather too long on a sunbed and, protesters claim, is "as fat and round as a mandarin".

Across Russia, the so-called Day of Wrath, with protests organised in 50 cities from the Baltic to the Pacific, was mostly a disappointment for the opposition. Just a few hundred people turned out in Vladivostok and Irkutsk, places where organisers had expected thousands. In Moscow there were just a few dozen protesters, many of whom were swiftly arrested.

But Kaliningrad, Russia's exclave on the Baltic, is fast becoming the vanguard of the Russian opposition movement. Here, something unusual seemed to be happening. Most people said they were there because they wanted systematic political change. When cries went up of "Freedom!" and "Putin. Resign!", hundreds joined in. Protesters, male and female and ranging in age from teenagers to pensioners, said they were sick of living in the present political climate. "Putin treats us like livestock," said Yury, 34. "He is like a tsar who has dispatched his evil princes to the regions. We don't want Boos and we don't want Putin."

Kaliningrad, which until 1945 was a German city named Königsberg, is separated from the rest of Russia, wedged between Poland and Lithuania. Many young people have never been to Moscow or St Petersburg, but most have been to Poland and Germany.

"People here are more uninhibited, more democratic, than in the rest of Russia," said Konstantin Polyakov, the deputy head of the Kaliningrad branch of United Russia, the Putin-backed party that dominates Russian politics.

The was frantic manoeuvring in the government in the days and weeks before Saturday's protest. A protest in the city in January drew more than 10,000 people and took authorities by surprise. The Kremlin official responsible for Kaliningrad was sacked, and high-level Moscow officials flew in for talks. In an unprecedented step, Mr Boos invited the opposition for talks.

"Some of the people who flew in from Moscow couldn't believe we had a protest of 10,000 people and didn't disperse them with police," said Mr Polyakov. "But that is not our way here. There are real problems – higher taxes, visa issues for travel to Europe, and transport tariffs – and we want to solve them through dialogue." A mixture of carrot and stick was used to derail the protest. The authorities hastily organised a farmers' market for the square on Saturday, and prominent opposition figures reported the tax police taking a sudden interest in their accounts.

Konstantin Doroshok, the most respected local opposition leader, entered lengthy talks with Mr Boos, which resulted in him cancelling the protest and calling instead for the opposition to negotiate. By Friday evening, tension in the city was palpable. Outside the regional administration, where Mr Doroshok was meeting with Mr Boos, other opposition figures muttered darkly that he had been bribed to keep quiet. Some said he could not cope with the pressure of being responsible for potential bloodshed. "I've known him for many years, but I think he's taken the wrong road," said one of Mr Doroshok's friends and opposition colleagues. "I don't know what they offered him, power, money or what. It's a shame."

At the Hotel Moskva, senior opposition figures arrived from Moscow. Dressed in a sharp white suit was Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister, now part of Solidarity, an opposition group. "We are beginning to see the recognition by the general public in the regions that it's Putin who is to blame for the decline in real incomes," said Mr Milov.

With little mention of Saturday's protest on state television, disgruntled locals swapped information and rumours online. Through word of mouth and online organisation, thousands of people arrived at the square and overran the market, waving their mandarins, and wearing badges calling for the resignation of Mr Boos.

The opposition has little to offer except criticism of the authorities, and liberal politics have negligible support. Few serious political analysts believe Russia is anywhere close to a serious co-ordinated threat to the Putin regime. But the scale of grassroots discontent in Kaliningrad will give the Kremlin cause for concern.

"There is a turning point in the attitudes of the active political class," said Mr Milov. "The protest in January attracted 3 per cent of the city's population. Revolution happens because of the minority who want change."

Kaliningrad: Russia's Baltic annexe

*Nestled between Poland to the south and Lithuania to the north east, the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad was part of Germany until it was annexed by the USSR in 1945. At the end of the Second World War, the German population either fled or was expelled. Kaliningrad, on the Baltic coast, is hundreds of miles from the Russian border, but the two remain closely linked. The majority of the region's 940,000 residents are ethnic Russians, and it is the centre of the Russian motor, consumer electronics and soybean processing industries. The region was a closed military zone throughout the Soviet period, and remains a key military base, hosting the Russian Baltic Fleet at Baltiysk, Russia's only European ice-free port.