Behind the fence

In Moscow on July 31, people are trying to gather for a rally in defense of Article 31 of the Constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. The authorities once again do not allow the protest to take place. In the square there are strange races behind a fence involving two cars. Only the area under the colonnade of the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and the area around the Mayakovsky monument are not fenced. The exit from the Mayakovskaya metro station is closed - both for those who disagree and for ordinary citizens. As eyewitnesses report on blogs, the organizers of the action are standing near the KZCH - the head of the “Other Russia” Eduard Limonov, the head of the Moscow Helsinki Group Lyudmila Alekseeva and Left Front activist Konstantin Kosyakin. The police are negotiating with them. Next to them is human rights activist Valery Borshchev. Other Left Front activists, led by Sergei Udaltsov, have already been detained. Udaltsov handcuffed himself to the bars near the KZCH building, and his hand was injured. Udaltsov managed to tell reporters that he and other Left Front activists were asked to come to the square by the defenders of the Khimki forest, the felling of which, by the way, resumed on July 31. Others are also detained, in particular, the co-chairman of the Solidarity movement Boris Nemtsov. Members of the Russian Social Movement Natalya Kholmogorova and Matvey Tseng, who were present in the square as observers, were detained. After an hour in the paddy wagon they were released. Present at the action are writer Viktor Shenderovich and editor-in-chief of the online publication Grani.Ru Vladimir Korsunsky.

In total, more than 70 people were detained; they are in the Tverskoye, Basmannoe, Krasnoselskoye, Yakimanka, Arbat, and Zamoskvorechye police stations. Eyewitnesses on blogs report that a total of approximately 800 protesters gathered in the square. Solidarity activist Ilya Yashin claims that there were one and a half thousand protesters. Nemtsov was later charged with resisting police officers.
Meanwhile, similar actions took place in Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Krasnoyarsk (despite the refusal of approval), Kemerovo (the organizer, Alexander Nikolaenko, was detained two minutes after the start; on the evening of July 30 he was already detained), Novosibirsk, Omsk, Kaliningrad, Izhevsk, Blagoveshchensk , Chelyabinsk (two actions took place here - legal, with the participation of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, and illegal (two blocks from the central square), the participants of which almost immediately began to be put in paddy wagons), Tver. In Nizhny Novgorod, on Freedom Square, an action of the pro-Kremlin “Young Guard” is taking place, but not a collection of signatures for assigning the city the status of a city of military glory, as was announced, but “The Most Massive Kiss.” In St. Petersburg, police detain protesters near Gostiny Dvor. Three detainees climbed onto the roof of the paddy wagon and began chanting anti-government slogans, but were soon pushed back.