The goal of the mayor's office is to make it difficult to mobilize people

The Moscow City Hall continues to refuse approval for the procession on October 27.

Firstly, you actually need to sue for breaking the law. And secondly, I don’t see anything surprising in this. We have witnessed large violations, for example, during various legal proceedings, and not only. Actually, there is nothing new about them breaking laws. Their goal in this case is to make it as difficult as possible for people to mobilize, this is understandable. The later they make a decision, the more difficult it will be for people to gather.

There are at least two reasons for the fact that they committed these violations right now. Firstly, such impunity for breaking laws cannot remain, so to speak, permanent. Since they do this completely without any responsibility, this naturally escalates. And secondly, in this particular case, the problem is that they are not sure whether they managed to bring down the protest wave or not, and they are afraid of its continuation.

Alexander Ryklin:

It seems that the Department of Regional Security of the Moscow government received direct instructions from higher-ups to make every effort to prevent mass protests in Moscow. Having unmotivatedly and illegally refused to allow Muscovites to hold a march in support of political prisoners on Saturday, October 26, the mayor’s office, apparently, is going to cold-bloodedly ignore the application submitted by the Protest Action Committee for the march on October 27.

At least, the applicants of the protest event did not receive any official response within the time limits established by law. True, there were two phone calls. The first followed on Tuesday evening (more precisely, at 18:08, that is, after the legal approval time had expired). A certain Mr. Strukov, who introduced himself as an employee of the Department of Regional Security, told Pyotr Tsarkov (one of the applicants of the demonstration) that the mayor’s office is ready to approve the event only on the following conditions: a reduction in the number of people to 10 thousand, a passage from Pushkinskaya to Sakharov Avenue along the outer side of the Boulevard Ring, the end of the event on Sakharov in front of the Garden Ring. There is no talk of laying flowers at the Solovetsky Stone.

The second time they called your humble servant (I am also among the applicants) today, October 23, at 8:30. The same Mr. Strukov politely, but very urgently demanded from me an immediate answer whether we agree to the proposals of the mayor's office. I replied that we still have not received any official documents from the mayor’s office, and we have not heard any reasoned explanations why the format has been radically changed. Therefore, we have no reason yet to give a meaningful answer to a proposal that does not exist. Mr. Strukov was very irritated by this response, but promised that he would convey our position to his leadership. That, in fact, is the whole conversation.

Today, during the day, the Protest Action Committee will discuss the current situation and, without a doubt, will make an official statement.