Translated material
sign of agreement
"March of Dissent" in St. Petersburg took place in the presence of the President
Sunday's “March of Dissent” in St. Petersburg, which gathered about one and a half thousand people, ended in a mass brawl between riot police and the opposition. Dozens of people were beaten with batons, several people were hospitalized, and more than a hundred were detained. Among those detained were the leader of the Russian National Bolsheviks, Eduard Limonov, who specially arrived from Moscow to participate in the march (he was taken from a colleague’s apartment after the rally), the head of the St. Petersburg branch of the NBP Andrei Dmitriev, the head of the local branch of the Yabloko party Maxim Reznik, the leader of the Red Vanguard youth" (AKM) Sergei Udaltsov, as well as several journalists covering the event. Another one of the organizers of the march, ex-Yabloko member Sergei Gulyaev, was taken to the hospital with a suspected broken arm. According to official figures provided by law enforcement agencies, 120 people were detained as a result of the rally. According to the same data, no more than 500 people took part in the action. That is, every fourth person was detained.The peacefully started and peacefully ended authorized opposition rally on Pionerskaya Square in St. Petersburg developed into the “March of Dissent,” when the official part of the event was already completed, and the crowd of oppositionists spilled out into the street to the metro station, cordoned off by a triple cordon of riot police and internal troops. Law enforcement agencies set up a “corridor” for the oppositionists, along which the latter were supposed to move to the nearest Pushkinskaya metro station, but some of the protesters (from 200 to 300 people) spontaneously followed in the direction of Moskovsky Prospekt and the neighboring Tekhnologichesky Institut station.
It was not possible to get far - on the square near the Vitebsk railway station, the oppositionists were met by a cordon of riot police with batons. The marchers tried to break through the cordon. Bottles were thrown at the riot police, after which a fight broke out. The riot police began beating the march participants with batons. Passers-by and journalists covering the event fell under the “hot hand” of law enforcement agencies. Riot police tried to push the crowd out of the square, as a result, part of it spread to the opposite side of Zagorodny Prospekt - to the park opposite Vitebsky Station. There the oppositionists were again cordoned off and dispersed with blows from batons.
Yesterday, compared to the previous “March of Dissent,” which took place in St. Petersburg on March 3 , the police took even more extensive security measures - law enforcement agencies attracted reinforcements to St. Petersburg from almost all regions of the north-west. Traffic was stopped along Zagorodny Avenue adjacent to Pionerskaya Square, and the square itself near the Youth Theater was cordoned off by a triple cordon of riot police and internal troops. There were police trucks on all the surrounding streets.
Two water cannons were prepared to disperse the “dissenters,” but they were never used. Random onlookers at the entrance to the protest site were stopped by metal detectors. No more than 1.5 thousand people gathered at the rally - about half as many as last time. It is curious that on the eve of the planned march, President Vladimir Putin arrived in St. Petersburg. He remained in the city on Sunday.
The rally itself took place without incident, the speakers called for fair elections, demanded that the government and the president resign, and that construction of the Gazprom City business center in St. Petersburg be stopped. The oppositionists held the rally for exactly as long as they were allotted by the regulations, and then called on those gathered to “proceed in an orderly manner to the Pushkinskaya metro station.”
Initially, the organizers of the “March of Dissent” expected to march to Smolny, but this morning the leader of the St. Petersburg National Bolsheviks Andrei Dmitriev said that if this does not succeed, they are ready to limit themselves to only a rally.
Meanwhile, some of the participants in the Sunday action did reach Smolny - about 100 people gathered in the area of the park near the government house, who came to hand over the resolution adopted at the rally to the authorities. The crowd was met by riot police. As a result, several activists were detained there too.