Russians seek change after anti-Putin demonstration

Russians sought out the first signs of change Sunday after tens of thousands rallied across the country and swarmed Moscow in the biggest ever show of defiance against Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule. Saturday’s historic demonstrations near the Kremlin saw more than 50,000 chant “Russia without Putin” and deride his ruling party for its narrow victory in December 4 elections that were alleged to have been riddled with fraud. The show of public anger was unprecedented for a city that emerged from the tumultuous 1990s as the birthplace of the “managed democracy” system that Putin set up across Russia on his rise to the presidency in 2000. The ex-KGB chief now serves as premier and this month’s legislative poll was seen as a litmus test of his decision to return to the Kremlin for up to 12 more years in March elections that he seemed destined to win. But scenes similar to those seen Saturday in Moscow were also replayed on a smaller scale across the industrial hubs of Siberia and the Urals – a sign that Putin’s path back may be more fraught than it appeared just a week ago. “Right now there is actually a chance for us to change something,” said 44-year-old Anna Bekhmentova as the demonstrators chanted “No to a police state!” and tied the protest movement’s white ribbons to their winter jackets. “No one I know voted for United Russia,” said Bekhmentova in reference to a party the opposition has branded a gang of “swindlers and thieves.” Putin’s planned job swap with President Dmitry Medvedev saw his impressive popularity ratings take a surprise hit amid grumblings that the people were never consulted about who should lead their country next. The opposition to Putin meanwhile is expanding beyond a narrow base of veteran liberals and far-right nationalists to attract popular cultural figures with broad appeal such as detective story writer Boris Akunin. “I have not seen Moscow like this for 20 years,” Akunin told the Moscow crowd. State television – scorned by the Internet community for its blanket ban on coverage of post-election unrest – took the unusual step Saturday evening of leading its news program with Moscow rally coverage. “So does anyone have complaints left about NTV after yesterday’s 7:00 pm (news) broadcast,” the television station demanded in an unusual message posted on its official Twitter feed. Some in the Russian opposition interpreted this as an early sign of change while a Kremlin source told the popular gazeta.ru news site that the decision to run the mostly-balanced reports was taken personally by Medvedev. “I cannot believe it! Did they really decide to talk about it?!” one person wrote in a comment on the Twitter account of Channel One. The Kremlin source added that Medvedev had also instructed the Moscow police to handle the protesters “extremely gently” after seeing more than 1,000 activists bundled away by riot police the previous week. But dozens of people were still arrested in the Russian regions as officials scrambled to come up with a response to the re-emergence of political activity in cities that had stayed quiet since the early post-Soviet times. “This is an entirely new situation. This is a lot of people for the provinces,” said Alexey Malashenko of the Carnegie Moscow Centre. The biggest regional rallies saw some 5,000 people come out in Novosibirsk -- Russia’s third largest city and the heart of Siberia -- and the industrial hub of Chelyabinsk that Stalin developed in the Ural Mountains in the 1930s. “This is the start of a new stage,” said Yevgeny Gontmakher of the Institute of Contemporary Development centre that Medvedev set up in 2008. “People have developed a taste for mass demonstrations and are now ready to rise up in response to anything,” Gontmakher said. Analysts said rapid social change and the Internet’s growing penetration in Russia may have caught Kremlin strategists off guard after a decade in which they could mold public opinion with the help of state-controlled media. “The elections are approaching and people’s trust is low,” said Carnegie analyst Malashenko. “This means that the ruling class has to think about how it should behave next.” Putin on path back to presidency At Saturday’s protest, one man did so silently. Standing almost motionless for minutes at a stretch, he held a simple A4 size sheet of paper printed with the slogan: “Mr Putin, my civil rights are not your property.” Most of the protesters were more vocal, mixing shouted calls for a new election with chants of “Down with Putin!” and – one of the standard slogans at much smaller protests held by Kremlin foes before the election – “Russia without Putin!” That Russia may not come for years, despite nationwide protests whose size -- unthinkable even a few weeks ago – prompted one speaker to say that opposition flags would soon fly from the Kremlin’s towers. Recent opinion polls have shown Putin, president for eight years until 2008 and prime minister since then, remains the most popular politician in Russia. He can count on millions of votes in a March 4 presidential election in which polls indicate he will win a six-year term. If he does, he could run again and potentially rule until 2024. “Putin won’t leave and there won’t be any major changes in the country,” said Ernst Klyavitsky, 75, a retired electrician who said he had “never missed a protest” against Communist rule as the Soviet Union was on the verge of collapse. “But the authorities need to know how angry we are,” he said. They know now and are frightened, said Boris Baranov, 36, analyst and translator for a Moscow engineering firm who waited outside a kiosk near the protest site as his friends stocked up on rolls to fortify them during the four-hour rally. “Authoritarian governments are more sensitive to public opinion than many think,” Baranov said. On the streets around the protest site at Bolotnaya Square, hundreds of helmeted riot police with truncheons and body armor and trucks full of troops seemed to support his argument. “You can tell that those in power are worried – they fear this,” Baranov said of the protests.