At Swamp area of Moscow at a meeting "for fair" elections have gathered about 20 thousand people, another 5 thousand people - by her side. These official figures reported by the press service of the Metropolitan State University MIA. "The Swamp area as of 15:00 Moscow time gathered about 20 thousand people. Another 5 thousand people are on the adjacent territory, "- said a spokesman for the Metropolitan Police.
ens of thousands of Russians yesterday called for strongman Vladimir Putin to resign during a historic day of protest over allegedly rigged elections.
Despite a vast security clampdown, riot police and army units allowed the peaceful crowds to vent their anger in the biggest rallies the country has seen since the fall of the USSR.
As many as 50,000 massed at Moscow’s Bolotnaya Square near the Kremlin.
Flaring up: Protest: As night falls, activists continue to voice their anger at the rally
United: Thousands of Russians are out on the streets protesting against Sunday's election results
Burning down: Russian nationalists burn a flag of the United Russia party during a Bolotnaya Square rally
It followed demonstrations in 70 cities across the country - many held in freezing snow, where campaigners screamed 'Putin's a louse' and demanded he quit - including Siberia and the Far East.
Last night, protesters issued an ultimatum to Prime Minister Putin to cancel ‘fraudulent’ parliamentary elections and stage a rerun – or face an even larger mass protest in two weeks.
Standing room only: An aerial view of the rally in Bolotnaya Square this afternoon
Flaring up: Protesters walk amidst smoke from a flare in the city centre to attend a sanctioned rally in Bolotnaya Square
Yesterday, he kept a low profile, monitoring the extraordinary scenes from his official residence near Moscow. Last night his spokesman said: ‘The government cannot yet formulate its attitude to the many thousands meeting at Bolotnaya.’
There were even calls from the crowd for Putin to be jailed over the ‘rigged’ parliamentary poll, which his United Russia party narrowly won last week, and the endemic corruption which is rampant at all levels throughout the country.
Independent observers suggest United Russia’s vote was inflated from about 25 per cent to 50 per cent of the total share, enough to give an overall majority.
Exact estimates on the size of yesterday’s protest varied but there was agreement it is the largest Putin has seen.
‘Maybe 100,000 people were at this rally,’ declared Mikhail Kasyanov, Putin’s first prime minister but now a bitter enemy. ‘Today is the beginning of the end for these thieving authorities.’
Anger: An elderly Russian holds up a poster of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin which reads No! as thousands packed into Moscow to protest against the elections
Voices heard: Protesters are congregating in Moscow's city centre to protest against the rigged election
Packed out: Bolotnaya Square is filled with tens of thousands of protesters all campaigning against the rigged elections
Anti-Putin: Protesters hold a red banner reading 'Rot Front' during the rally against Sunday's election results
Organised dissent: Russians walk into Moscow's city centre for the sanctioned rally in Bolotnaya Square
Calm before the storm? Interior Ministry officers stand guard as crowds flock into Moscow city centre (left) as People's Freedom Party leader Boris Nemtsov (right) also protests
Overthrow: Opposition protesters in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar took to the streets today
Taking a stand: Protesters also congregated on the streets of the Siberian city of Novosibirsk
And ex-deputy premier Boris Nemtsov, briefly jailed for taking part in an earlier protest, said: ‘The current regime does not know how to behave with dignity. All they know is cynicism.’
Leading Russian novelist Boris Akunin said: ‘I haven’t seen such things for 20 years, since 1991. There’s no way back from events such as these. Our city has changed.’
As the protests unfolded, the websites of Russia’s two major state-run channels ignored developments in an act of Soviet-style censorship.
In London, protesters chanted slogans and displayed banners outside the Houses of Parliament. And Moscow rally organiser, opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov, has announced there will be another protest on December 24, which he says will be twice as large.
The protests come three months before Putin, who was president from 2000 to 2008 and effectively remained the country's leader while prime minister, is to seek a third term in office.
The public outpouring challenges his image, supported by state-controlled TV channels, as a man who won the affection of most Russians.
That image was undercut by last Sunday's parliamentary elections, during which his United Party narrowly retained a majority of seats.
Ex-pat protest: Russians gathered outside the Houses of Parliament in London to also rally against what they think was a fraudulent election process
But it lost the unassailable two-thirds majority it held in the previous parliament. Even that reduced performance was unearned, inflated by massive vote fraud, the opposition says, citing reports by local and international monitors of widespread violations.
The reports of vote-rigging and the party's loss of seats acted as a catalyst for long-simmering discontent of many Russians.
'The falsifications that authorities are doing today have turned the country into a big theater, with clowns like in a circus,' said Alexander Trofimov, one of the early arrivals for the protest at Bolotnaya Square, on an island in the Moscow River adjacent to the Kremlin.
Opposition: Protesters took to the streets of Russia's far eastern city of Vladivostok today to show their anger against the alleged rigged elections
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2072427/Russian-protests-2011-Vladimir-Putins-louse-say-demonstrators-alleged-election-fraud.html#ixzz1gFPCXUew
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