Fountain battles

A rally on Pushkinskaya Square ended in overclocking

The peaceful rally “For honest elections”, which took place on Pushkinskaya Square, ended with clashes with riot police and detentions. To express the indignation of past elections to the square came from 10 thousand, according to the Central Internal Affairs Directorate, to 20-25 thousand, according to the organizers. The rally itself took place without excesses, but upon its completion, the leader of the “Left Front” Sergei Udaltsov suggested that they wanted to disperse and stay in the square. The sanctions for such an event were not theoretically required - it could be held in the format of the meeting of voters with the State Duma deputy Ilya Ponomarev.

Most of the audience eventually dispersed home, but about one and a half thousand people chose to linger. Udaltsov, Ponomarev, as well as Ilya Yashin from Solidarity and the famous lawyer Alexei Navalny climbed onto the cup of the fountain in the center of the square with a megaphone and continued to chant the slogans. But the delay in the opposition action was not included in the plans of the Moscow Central Internal Affairs Directorate. Almost immediately, the riot police surrounded the fountain and began to cut off the listeners, moving them to the metro. Then the battle moved to the fountain, the special forces went down to the ice and began to detain the opposition. Around Udaltsov, Navalny and Yashin, a group of supporters rallied, but with the use of strength and batons they were pulled out. At the same time, they did not particularly ceremony with the detentions, and Alena Popova even broke his hand to the assistant to the deputy of Ponomarev. “What are you standing here, Bl..d, all to the subway,” the fighters yelled at the not yet detained oppositionists and journalists. When the opposition leaders were already in the auto -zaks, the remaining activists tried to continue the action, blocked Tverskaya Street and moved to the triumphal square, but halfway they were caught up by buses with special forces and the detention continued. In total, about 400 people were delivered to the police departments.