Russia anti-Putin protest: Over 140 detained in Moscow
Russian police detained over 140 people including a high-profile Moscow deputy after Kremlin critics protested Wednesday against changes to the constitution, the OVD-Info monitor said.
The group, which tracks arrests at political protests, said 142 persons were detained Wednesday evening. Many persons including journalists were devote police vehicles, AFP correspondents said from the scene.
An AFP journalist was also briefly detained.
Yulia Galyamina, a prominent Moscow city councillor who has spearheaded a campaign against President Vladimir Putin’s controversial changes to the constitution, was among those detained as well as her daughter, she said on Facebook.
The constitutional changes could see President Vladimir Putin stay static in power for another 16 years.
Earlier Wednesday Galyamina and her allies gathered in Moscow’s central Pushkin Square despite rainy weather to accumulate signatures from hundreds of supporters from this month’s constitutional reforms, to contest them in court.
“We are lodging a class action lawsuit,” activist Andrei Pivovarov told AFP as he gathered the signatures on the steps of a statue of national poet Alexander Pushkin dominating the square.
“We are collecting signatures from in the united states,” he said.
‘Russia without Putin’
Writing down the road Twitter, Galyamina said that they had gathered 5,000 signatures. “That is an outstanding result,” she said.
At one point the campaigners had to pause because they quickly ran out of paper, they said.
Some protesters brandished placards, while some chanted “Russia without Putin” and “Russia will be free.”
Activist Maria Alyokhina of Pussy Riot fame also resulted in, calling the amendments a “constitutional coup.”
Earlier this month Putin, 67, oversaw a deeply controversial seven-day vote that amended the constitution and today allows him to serve two more six-year conditions after his mandate expires in 2024.
The amendments also included populist measures such as for example an effective ban on gay marriage.
Leading opposition politician Alexei Navalny has said the poll had set “an archive in faking votes” and the effect had “nothing in common with people’s views”.
Many in Pushkin Square said that they had resulted in to protest the changes championed by Putin who can now potentially stay static in the Kremlin until 2036.
“I voted against,” Inna Golovina, a 46-year-old accountant, told AFP. “People say the results were rigged.”
Pavel Tarasov, a Moscow city councillor representing the Communist Party, said he'd prefer to leave his signature but the crowd was too large.
“The results of the vote usually do not suit anyone,” he said.
A large group of mostly young activists later split off and marched along central Moscow streets before many were roughly detained.
Galyamina was detained in Pushkin Square following the signature-collecting event was over.
‘Putin like pharaoh’
Up to thousand persons gathered for an identical event in the second city of Saint Petersburg, an AFP correspondent said.
“The authorities do whatever they want, people’s opinion will not interest anybody,” lamented Andrei Stepanov, 50.
“We must show for some reason that we are against this.”
Anatoly Naidyonov, 38, compared the Russian president to a “pharaoh who is completely detached from reality”.
“This may all end badly for the united states,” he added.
Earlier Wednesday parliament’s lower house approved,at an integral second reading, controversial legislation which allows elections to be held over three days, in a move the opposition said was aimed at further hollowing out democratic polls.
The amendments allow elections to be held outside polling stations and permit voters to cast ballots in a variety of public spaces.
Through the June 25-July 1 plebiscite, makeshift polling stations were set up at unlikely locations including buses, tents and street benches.
The voting process, which was not monitored by proper election observers, was ridiculed on social media.
