"At the Flash stage." How prepared and how the rally in Khabarovsk was held

In the center of Khabarovsk on Saturday, a mass rally was held against the arrest of the governor of the region Sergey Furgal. In front of the building of the regional government, people chanted: “This is our land!”, “Moscow, shame!”, “Freedom to Furgal!” And "Putin - organized crime group!". The police did not interfere with what was happening, some activists proposed to make an action unlimited. The estimates of the number vary greatly (from five to 35 thousand people), the Ministry of Internal Affairs reported 10-12 thousand participants, but in any case this is the largest political action in the Far East over the past decade. At the same time, people took to the streets in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Elban, Sunny and other cities of the region.

“11.07.2020 on the territory of the area named after V.I. Lenin conducts disinfection measures in connection with the prevention of a new coronavirus infection Covid-19 . We hope for your understanding, ” - red signs with such text appeared on the main square of Khabarovsk in the early morning. The fence with the signs over the night surrounded the entire area on which the White House is standing - the building of the regional government.

The head of government, Governor Sergei Furgal from yesterday, has been under arrest in the Lefortovo pre -trial detention center, and on Lenin Square, the Khabarovsk people outraged by his detention and hasty delivery to Moscow staged the largest rally in the Far East in recent years.

Two hours before the appointed time on the fenced square, harvesting machines circled aimlessly, and the demands were heard from the loudspeakers to observe a social distance. At first, the installed barriers were forced to gather at the monument to Lenin, but by the beginning of the action they stopped enough space, and the crowd moved to the square, dismantling the fencing under the approving signals of passing cars. To the chanting "Freedom Furgal!" And "Moscow, leave!" The protesters themselves left the square, moving the column along the streets of the city; “The Far East - ours!” were added to their slogans! And "This is our land!".

The action in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, which was at the same time, was held according to a similar scenario: the gathering place in the morning was closed to disinfect and covered with an emergency ribbon, but hundreds of citizens still walked through the streets.

Although the Khabarovsk residents told the “Mediazone” before the action that they feared to accelerate the forces of the National Guard, there were no detentions on the procession. However, when people returned to the building of the regional government and began to chant the calls to the resignation of Vladimir Putin, at least ten police officers lined up at the very doors.

Preparation

Both online and offline were prepared for a rally in Khabarovsk. So far, thousands of pictures “I/we Sergey Furgal” with the white-green-blue flag of the region and posts with the hashtags #freedomfurgalu and #Yamyshefurgal filled the tapes of Instagram, printed the same slogan on posters and t-shirts, distributed on the streets and glued on the rear windows of cars, read out on the facades of the houses And built from cars . Almost 40 thousand people signed a petition in support of the head of the region.

On the day of detention, Sergei Furgal was the first to react by residents of Komsomolsk-on-Amur. “We had a series of single pickets, at the same time there was a small rally on the square near Tsum,” the head of the production department of the local printing house Vyacheslav Zhilkin told Mediazone, giving out the stickers by passers -by on the evening street. - On July 10, there was already a larger rally with banners - well, so, serious, about a hundred people were already. A bunch of Feesbashnikov. " After the promotion to work with Zhvakin, the “ordinary hard worker,” came a policeman who issued a protocol under Article 20.6.1 of the Code of Administrative Offenses (failure to fulfill the rules of conduct in case of a threat of an emergency) - for a picket on July 1 against amendments to the Constitution. “The main oppositionists of Komsomolsk,” he says, in anticipation of the rally on July 11, the security forces promptly “took under the cap”.

“Komsomolsk is generally well done, they came out the very first. The Khabarovsk residents were the second, I came out the third, - the founder of the Real Drivers car club is proud of from the small town of Vyazemsky Alexander Pavlyuk. “I, since I was in the LDPR party, thought that there would be a proposal from the party-and they sat-speaking out, and I decided to protect [the governor].” They still only think. ” Pavlyuk says that he also faced the increased attention of the security forces: “The police tried to force me to tear off the stickers from the car because it was a rally. [The employee came up] when I stood and drank coffee with Cheburs. I say guys, you are wrong, in my car I can stick everything that I want, my guys move in all villages and points that I told them, clean one at a time. A rally is when an accumulation of people, slogans. ”

The police eventually left, and Pavlyuk had not yet waited for official assistance from the party. “Your impulses even go to spontaneous rallies and protest promotion in humanly. But we are not calling for anyone. We do not want someone to suffer. We cannot get out ourselves, as they are obliged to act within the framework of the legislation, ” says Instagram of the regional branch of the LDPR. “Remember that participation in an unauthorized rally entails the imposition of an administrative fine, mandatory work or even administrative arrest.”

The same formulations are in the official instagram of Sergei Furgal with 250 thousand subscribers. Among the heads of Russian regions on the Instagram of Furgal, one of the most popular, the “Center for the Political Conjuncture” puts it in second place in the number of likes (the first - for Ramzan Kadyrov). The governor’s account is conducted by the press service, which plans to use the page “as the main platform for informing about how Sergey Ivanovich’s business is moving”.

The press secretary of the head of the region Nadezhda Tomchenko admits to Mediazone that he is afraid of hacking the governor's instagram-her own accounts were hacked the day before at night. “At the same time telegram and Instagram. Instagram was broken by my personal, the page is deleted there, and it is impossible to find it now, ”says Tomchenko. -I think they made a SIM card clone, if possible, because I could not even get [code] to change the password. In a telegram, you can see connected devices - there were other connected devices. I think that not my personal account wanted to hack, since I did not actively conduct it, he was a closed personal page. They wanted to hack the account, of course, the governor <...>, but they miscalculated - he was not tied to my phone number. "

The press service posted a message about responsibility for participating in an unauthorized rally after “official paper from one federal structure”, Tomchenko sighs. “The issue with the temporarily acting is still not allowed, no one has been appointed, they did not give the governor such an opportunity, apparently, it is necessary to wait for the federal center,” she argues. - We monitor [social networks] and see that people want to go to an unauthorized rally. We made an appeal to the official media from the deputy governor for social issues, but I feel that this will not stop people. Judging by the reaction of people on Instagram, under the post about "we do not urge to go to the rally" ... You can read what people say on this topic. "

"At least some ray of light"

However, the protest rally is not least owed to the efforts of the team of Sergei Furgal, the source of the Mediazone is sure in the political circles of the region, which asked to maintain its anonymity. According to him, even during the 2018 governor's campaign, Furgal skillfully used social networks, attacking his predecessor - United Russia Vyacheslav Shport - through anonymous channels and accounts, and, having come to power, "built a sufficiently powerful media machine." “I think that she [and launched promotions in support], because these were anonymous telegram channels, VKontakte publics, a fairly massive stifflamping nobly signed ads around the city.”

At the same time, the interlocutor of the Mediazone admits that in two years Sergey Furgal managed to make several popular decisions, and contrasted with his control style with his control. “There are a lot of claims to politics, but it was a big step forward, and the public paradigm moved, believed in the opportunity to change and go to the polls,” he explains.

“We have a very fond of Vargal here, because he was ... a chance for us, a chance to survive,” says Vyacheslav Zhilikin activist from Komsomolsk. -Because our land, our city is in a large decline-everything is destroyed here, and Furgal came and began to do something to raise something here. We all love him very much and support him very much - for us it was a big blow when we woke up and saw this show -off detention. This is right for people to show who they are in this country-it was not detained somewhere in the office of the squeeze, but straight, shooting, tough. ”

At the same time, Zhvakin emphasizes, his own attitude to the governor always remained critical: “The van had nuances when he said that he supported Putin - we looked at him, of course, with under love. But this did not help him, they still took him. Personally, I am not just for him or against, I am against political repression; The case is clearly registered, political. Personal is equal to our political. ”

“People are very angry, extremely evil. It is impossible to drive by cars on the roads, people are ready to kill each other, but are not ready to go to the barricades, ”says Khabarovsk entrepreneur Evgeny Gurov, who sells sneakers and men's clothing. “People saw at least some ray of light in the Dark Kingdom in the governor.” Furgal reduced the costs of maintaining the bureaucratic apparatus, he lists, fought for the rights of equity holders and sold a yacht standing on the government’s balance sheet, on which the governor Shport walked along the Amur.

“People saw that there was a person who cares not just about his own good, but cares about society,” Gurov is filled up, confident that his native village would soon cease to exist. -Of course, people after the arrest were outraged: people do not give a damn what happened there in the distant 2000s; Since events have occurred in recent years, people simply say that this is an order. Even if now [prove] that he did everything, that people were ordered, killed - no one will believe it. ”

The leader of the Vyazemsky car club Pavlyuk against the governor is incredible: “Everyone passes a lot of [checks] when he enters some positions: they must check him. It’s how to get into the border troops, there it checks the FSB for all structures. Why did Sergey Ivanovich touched that everyone was silent for so many years, and then somehow, after that, this incomprehensible accusation began that he was some kind of representative of the group, ordered mercenaries-from this I was dumbfounded. The man was the governor; The people chose him, and they took him from us. ”

“The Far East is now in principle in the stage of outbreak,” Pavlyuk says with sudden confidence. - That is, if you throw a match into the oil, it will flare up. This is the worst. "

Editor: Dmitry Tkachev