Daily Journal:

We've just been released. They presented me with two articles: that we allegedly disobeyed the police - me and another activist of ours - and additionally that I allegedly violated the procedure for organizing public events. But we were treated even more or less loyally, and the other two activists were not released, they were left in the cell - Ghazaryan and Shevchenko. We were in different departments with them. There were some more loyal policemen here who released us pending trial. But they were not released. There the police behave more harshly. I was there, at the Central Department of Internal Affairs, a week ago, they behaved rudely. I told them that they were disgracing the honor of the Russian police. The trial will be tomorrow, but neither the time nor the place has been set yet.

We have submitted an application to hold the event in compliance with all regulations. The authorities simply came up with a fake event instead of ours. And even the events that they came up with were held at a different time and did not overlap with ours. They just had instructions not to let us in, they were afraid that we would go to the city center. On weekends there are a lot of people there. When we carried out the preliminary action on December 5, there were also arrests then. We broke through, but we had to turn around and hold the procession in a format that was not what we wanted. But it’s one thing when 50 people are marching in a procession, but here there are 400, and the authorities realized that if we reached the city center with posters, chanting, it would be a disaster for them. That's why they went to great lengths to keep us out there. And this time, as soon as we reached that part of Krasnaya Street, where the pedestrian zone and the central part of the city begin, we were blocked and arrests took place.