Thousands protested on Saturday against Russian Prime Minister and president-elect Vladimir Putin’s domination of Russian politics after his crushing victory in the presidential election held on March 4.
However, the event failed to live up to the success of past rallies. The Moscow protest, which ended with a handful of arrests, was a fraction of the size of previous protests, in a sign the opposition is finding it hard to maintain momentum since Putin secured a third term as Russian president.
Organizers openly questioned whether mass protests were the best format to challenge Putin after their sixth rally in three months, with many suggesting it was time to organize themselves into a serious political force.
Moscow City Hall had approved a demonstration of up to 50,000 people on New Arbat Street in the city center, but police put the number attending at about 10,000. At previous rallies, about 100,000 people turned out.
“It is normal that the rallies are dying down,” said political analyst Dmitry Oreshkin, who organized vote observers at the elections and spoke at the protest. “We need something else — a move to political activity.”
At the end of the tightly policed protest, leftist leader Sergei Udaltsov attempted to lead an unsanctioned march of about 60 people, but police detained him and several others. He was released, but will have to appear in court next week.
The protest leaders, many of whom had observed the polls, repeatedly said that Putin’s election to president was illegitimate and urged the demonstrators to keep up the pressure.
Putin won 63.6 percent of the vote in the election and is now preparing for a May inauguration to take back the Kremlin job he previously held from 2000 to 2008 from his protege Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.
“The worst thing that can happen is that we get demoralized and say that the authorities have won,” former world chess champion Garry Kasparov said. “We have experienced resistance for the first time and it is just the start.”
Journalist and television presenter Ksenia Sobchak told the rally that the opposition needed to clarify its demands.
“We all know what we are against, we must show what we are for,” she said, to whistling from some in the crowd.
People at the rally said they wanted to keep up pressure on the authorities, but voiced disappointment at the turnout.
Police said they detained about 25 nationalists who walked out of the rally and tried to carry out two protests nearby.
The security forces also arrested about 40 people at an unsanctioned march on Saturday in the northwestern city of Saint Petersburg.
At another unsanctioned -protest, truncheon-wielding police detained about 50 people in the central Russian city of Nizhny Novgorod, an opposition activist said.
The movement as a whole now needs to change tactics, journalist Sergei Parkhomenko, one of the main organizers of the Moscow rallies, told Kommersant FM radio.
“I am not sure the next event will be a rally. In my opinion, we drew a really beautiful conclusion to a three-month cycle that started in December. I think the time has come now to analyze what has happened, regroup and move on,” he said.
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