Russian
police battle anti-Putin protesters
Russian
riot police beat protesters about the head with batons and detained
more than 400 on Sunday after clashes broke out at a Moscow rally by
thousands of people against Vladimir Putin on the eve of his return
to the presidency.
7
May, 2012
Opposition
leaders Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov were among
those detained during violence that showed the depth of divisions and
tensions in Russia as the former KGB spy starts his six-year third
term on Monday.
Police
struck out with batons and hit several protesters on the head as they
pushed back a crowd of thousands which advanced towards them holding
white metal crowd barriers and throwing objects, Reuters reporters at
the rally said.
The
demonstrators fought back with flagpoles but police formed a line
with riot shields to prevent them moving towards a bridge leading
across the Moscow river to the Kremlin.
Riot
police waded into the crowd in small groups with arms locked, picking
out people and hauling them away, then pushed forward in lines to hem
protesters in and disperse them.
"Putin
has shown his true face, how he 'loves' his people - with police
force," said Dmitry Gorbunov, 35, a computer analyst and one of
many middle-class protesters who have joined protests against Putin
in the past five months.
The
violence came at the end of a day of protests in several cities
against Putin, who will be sworn in at a lavish ceremony inside the
Kremlin at which the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Patriarch
Kirill, will bless him.
Many
of the protesters are angry that Putin is extending his 12-year
domination of Russia, despite being undermined by protests, and fear
he will stifle political and economic reform in his third
presidential term.
They
are also frustrated that the same faces will continue ruling the
world's largest country and energy producer, ignoring the biggest
protests since Putin rose to power in 2000.
Four
years after Putin ushered his ally Dmitry Medvedev into the Kremlin
and became premier in 2008 because of constitutional term limits, the
two have agreed to swap jobs, with Medvedev set to take Putin's
position as prime minister.
"I
trusted Putin as long as he ruled within the bounds of the
constitution but our law limits the presidency to two consecutive
terms. He and his clown Medvedev spat on that," said Andrey
Asianov, a 44-year-old protester.
COFFIN
OF DEMOCRACY
At
least 20,000 people protested in Moscow under banners and flags,
chanting "Russia without Putin" and "Putin - thief".
Police said Udaltsov, Nemtsov and Navalny had been detained for
"incitement to mass disorder".
Udaltsov,
a leftist leader, was taken away as he tried to address the crowd
from a stage and Navalny, an anti-corruption blogger, was dragged off
after trying to organize a sit-in protest calling for Putin's
inauguration to be scrapped.
In
other protests, demonstrators carried a black coffin bearing the word
"democracy" through the Pacific port city of Vladivostok.
Several people were detained there and at protests in the Urals city
of Kurgan and Kemerovo in western Siberia.
The
Moscow protest was marred by the death of a photographer who
Itar-Tass news said fell from a balcony as he tried to take pictures
of the rally.
Health
authorities said 20 police and 17 protesters sought medical help,
including three police and 11 protesters who were hospitalized,
Interfax reported. Most were later released.
The
clashes were the worst since police moved in to disperse hundreds of
protesters at or after rallies the day after Putin's March 4 election
victory, which the opposition said was achieved with the aid of
electoral fraud.
But
the sting has gone out of protests since Putin, 59, won the election
with almost 64 percent of the vote.
The
former KGB spy simply ignored the protests. He looked relaxed as he
attended a religious ceremony led by Russian Orthodox Patriarch
Kirill that marked the transfer of a revered icon from a museum into
the hands of the Church.
A
few thousand Putin supporters attended a separate rally in Moscow
that was intended to show he enjoys more support than the opposition,
witnesses said.
"Democracy
is the power of the majority. Russia is everything, the rest is
nothing!" Alexander Dugin, a Kremlin-aligned nationalist, told
the pro-Putin crowd.
Putin
has dismissed allegations that widespread fraud helped him win the
presidential election and secured victory for his United Russia party
in a parliamentary poll in December, but the opposition says he was
illegitimately elected.
Medvedev
has pushed only limited political reforms through parliament
following the protests, which at their height attracted tens of
thousands of people in Moscow and St Petersburg but did not spread
outside big cities.
The
demonstrations have deprived Putin of his aura of invincibility, and
opposition candidates have been trying to get a foothold on power in
municipal elections, but the size of the protests on Sunday was
unlikely to trouble the president-elect.
Even
so, protesters said Sunday's rallies were another signal to Putin
that Russia had changed as he returns to the Kremlin after four years
absence, even if change was coming slowly two decades after the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
Such
protests were unthinkable until December, when anger over the
electoral fraud allegations spilled over.
"Civil
society is taking shaping little by little. People will concentrate
more on local problems and change things from the bottom up. It's
clear we aren't going to march on the Kremlin," said Maria
Golinchuk, 25, a kindergarten teacher.
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