'Freedom – it is a unique feeling,
which every person understands differently. You know, of course, there is
always an element of objectivity in freedom, but generally it is just our own
experiences’. If you are thinking I’m quoting Kant, you’re wrong. This is a
line from President Medvedev’s last interview that he gave to five TV channels
at once. He clearly wanted to be heard. Also, quite clearly, the irony of his
philosophising was not lost on the thousands of protestors who came out on May
6 to contest the government’s usurpation of their freedom and right to vote -
fairly, protest – peacefully, and think - differently.
Again, it is hard to tell just
how many people participated. The Moscow police place the figure at 8,000,
while the organisers claim the ‘March of Millions’ as the protest was
officially called, was not smaller than the election fraud rallies that
gathered anywhere between 130,000 and 200,000. Ironically, (yes, again –
there’s a lot of that today) the organisers filed for permission for 5,000
demonstrators with the city’s authorities. There have been detractions from the
march, some from well-known figures, as they faced increasing futility of
raging against the machine - so it is not just the government that likes to
pretend.
Now, if the number of those in
the opposition is debated, the number of police and special forces (OMON)
shocked even the well-seasoned commentators. The police line blocking the way
to the Kremlin looked like a fight scene straight out of Star Wars. Metal
detectors blocked entrance to the main square where protests were meant to be
held. However, everything was more or less peaceful when the march started. One
journalist said a friend had brought his toddler along, as indeed have others,
indicating that the plan was peaceful. Although it is still not quite clear how
the clashes started – with protestors trying to break through the police line
to get to the Kremlin, or with the police preventing the organisers from entering
the main square – a large part of participants became isolated by the ‘Udarnik’
(‘hard-hitter’, nonetheless) cinema and things went awry.
There are numerous videos of police brutality, with OMON using batons to beat protestors unconscious, then
leaving them on the ground. These images echo the footage that shocked the
world in 2010, when Aleksandr Lukashenko – ‘Europe’s Last Dictator’, put down
protests following a rigged election in Belarus. The government side
(represented on Channel 1 news)
claimed protestors were throwing bits of asphalt at them and, when these
endangered the ‘passers-by’, they intervened. Maybe someone did actually decide
to go for a walk in the middle of a rally, maybe…It was obvious that things got
out of hand, with the media reporting tear gas being used – while state TV has
OMON claiming it were fireworks lit by protestors to pass off as tear gas. Isn’t
it a useful word, ‘allegedly’? In a moment of sweet revenge, the NTV van got
showered with empty bottles and its tires were slashed – an answer to the shocking
propaganda film ‘Anatomy of Protest’ the network aired right after the
elections, ‘disclosing’ the protestors as fakes, ‘provocators’ etc. Having seen
the film, and not condoning violence in the slightest, I think the slashed tires
were totally deserved.
The Western media, even this
morning, reported 120-150 detained protestors. I was wondering where they got
the numbers from as even Channel 1
ran a figure of 250 last night, which it upgraded to 436 today. (The opposition
claims 570 arrests). Twenty people were injured, along with twenty-nine police
officers. (One of the OMON was interviewed on Channel 1, the reporter apologising for the man’s ‘slow speech’ as
he had sustained a head injury. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the man.
He was just struggling to string together a publishable sentence.) There have
been no reports of deaths, aside from a photographer who fell to his death
trying to get a better shot of the march. In an interview on TV Rain, Putin’s
spokesman said the police were ‘too soft’. As Novaya Gezeta’s Yulia Latinina points out, people who have used
less soft measures have had their foreign accounts frozen.
But, despite all these goings on,
Putin was sworn into his third term this noon, in a ludicrously pompous
ceremony performed for the first time at the Kremlin by no other but Ivan the
Terrible himself. (I got this bit of trivia from Channel 1, so I apologise if it is misinformation, but I couldn’t
resist pointing out the gaff.) There were Royal Guards, standing ovations, and
a lot, a lot of gold. There were some very unexpected guests. For one, his
wife, who Putin was widely rumoured to have divorced during his second term,
and who has since been confined in wither a mental institution, a monastery, or
both. (I remember catching the article about the divorce on the Washington Post website – the only
official source I found carrying the information, only to discover it deleted
an hour later.) His mistress – the former gymnast Alina Kabayeva, the mother of
at least one of his children, was also photographed outside the Kremlin, though
it is not clear from the official footage whether she was at the ceremony. Their affair, conducted in
multi-million mansions throughout the country, is shrouded in secrecy. And
though everyone expected Berlusconi to be there, Gorbachev was the real
surprise. Does anyone remember him saying that Putin ‘castrated’ Russian
democracy? Well, I don’t know what he was thinking. But he did not look happy,
I can tell you that. The banquet that followed cost a $1million, according to
Russia Today. The proceedings have been blessed by Archbishop of Russia Cyrill,
who had been awarded a prestigious state medal last year – along with the head
of the election committee Churov and the hated and corrupt head of the police,
Nurgaliev. Pretty cosy, isn’t it?
And speaking of cosy: the first
thing Putin did as President, aside from promising monetary benefits to World
War II veterans (the elderly handful always comes in handy when public images
need a lift) was to suggest Dmitry Medvedev for the position of Prime Minister.
In case someone was wondering who might take over Putin’s old job, the new President
did not even skip a beat on this one. And then, after yet another
self-satisfied smirk, the President donned on his ice skates and scored the
winning penalty in a hockey game against Russia’s Legends Team, a feat even
less likely than Boris Johnson winning a cycle race against Team GB.
While the footage of the
presidential journey to the Kremlin saw eerily deserted streets, there were
more protests today throughout the city with around 300 detained and people
were still being arrested while I was finishing researching this piece. Alexei Navalny,
Boris Nemtsov and Sergei Udaltsov – the organisers of the March of Millions,
were released today and are due to pay either a 1,000 roubles (20GBP) or spend
15 days in prison. I don’t know, what would you do?
A number of opposition media,
such as TV Rain and Slon.ru reported hacking attempts to bring down their sites
yesterday. Today, while researching, the Echo
Moscow website was suspended. Meanwhile, Sunday saw pro-Putin rallies as
well as the dress rehearsal of the May 9 Victory Day parade, with the usually
impressive show of military force. The way things are going, the administration
should have scheduled the inauguration for the 9th as well – to
celebrate the government’s victory over freedom. But maybe that’s too
subjective of me to say.
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