The “Sitting Rus'” rally brought together 20 relatives of prisoners and one provocateur

A rally against judicial arbitrariness was held on Friday in the center of Moscow. It was organized by the “Seated Rus'” movement, created by the relatives of the prisoners.

The action was coordinated with the city authorities in advance, but then the officials seemed to be afraid of their own liberalism, and the day before the rally, the police took away its organizer Sergei Rusakov. As the activists of "Rus Sitting" told, he was detained at the bus station of Rostov-on-Don, allegedly for obscene language. He spent the night in a monkey house and in the morning by a court decision he was sentenced to a day of administrative arrest.

Half an hour before the start of the action, the first employees of the UN TsSN (former OMON) came to Krasnopresnenskaya Zastava Square, where the rally was supposed to take place, and began to take up strategic positions. At 16.30, elderly people with rolls in their hands reached out to the monument, unfurled banners: “Public control over the investigative department!”, “No to custom-made criminal cases!”. The largest of the banners read: “Economy weak? The accountants are sitting!

- Down with the judge-executioners! Give public control over the investigative department! protesters chanted.

The main reason for the rally was the case of Vladimir Makarov, who was sentenced to 13 years for allegedly raping his own daughter. The protesters demanded equality of arms in court; mandatory audio recording of courts; expanding the powers of jury trials; recertification of judges by independent commissions; adoption of a law on independent examination of judicial acts and case materials.

In total, the rally was attended by about 30 people who came from Rostov, Ulyanovsk, Ryazan, the Ivanovo region and even the Komi Republic. Mostly these are relatives of victims of investigative and judicial arbitrariness. Among others, Valentina Kankiya, the wife of Stanislav Kankiya, beaten the day before in the Babushkinsky court, spoke .

At the height of the action, a well-fed man in a suit appeared at the cordon of the protesters. Posing as customs clearance manager Nikolai Milovanov, he began to provoke activists to riot.

“You are cowards, you have gathered here and are demonstrating open disrespect for the law,” Milovanov shouted. You don't respect your state. It would be better to get down to business!

The fight went on for another five minutes. The police watched with interest, apparently expecting that a real fight was about to happen and the action could be “curtailed” on completely legal grounds. But the activists realized that the provocation could be “custom-made”. The provocateur was ignored.