MOSCOW, February 4 (Itar-Tass) — Multi-thousand rallies will be staged in Moscow this Saturday. Despite a cold snap of nearly minus 20 degrees Celsius, staying in the capital already for a week, around 100,000 people may attend them.
The civil action “For honest elections” whose symbol is a white ribbon, promises to be the most numerous. It will start with a march and will end, as its organisers say, “with a short and vigorous 30-minute rally” in the Bolotnaya Square. Participants will march in four columns.
The march will be headed by “a joint civil column”— without party symbols; it will be followed by liberals, then nationalists, and the march will be rounded off by members of “leftist” organizations.
The march will start in the Kaluzhskaya Square; the columns will march along the Yakimanka Street and end in the Bolotnaya Square where the rally will start at 13.00.
Action organizers sent in an application for 50,000 people, but in real fact, the number will be somewhat less. At least 28,000 people confirmed their wish to participate in the action in the Facebook social network that became the main ground for preparing and advertising the march.
It will be the third protest action in the Russian capital, to be held in connection with reports in the mass media and Internet about numerous violations and rigging at the elections to the State Duma on December 4.
The rally plans to confirm earlier demands at the actions on December 10 and 24, including resignation of CEC head Vladimir Churov.
The action “We have something to lose” will start on the Poklonnaya Hill at 13.00. Deputy head of the party Patriots of Russia Nadezhda Korneyeva reported that “the main task is to tell words for the great and revitalized Russia”. “We do not want a return to the 1990s.
“As a result, we are against ‘orange’, ‘rosy’ and other coloured revolutions,” she said. The number of participants, indicated in the application for the rally – up to 15,000. Apart from the Patriots of Russia Party, it is also sponsored by Union of Pensioners and Veterans of Afghanistan.
Liberals who did not want to participate in the march “For honest elections” along with Communists and nationalists, will hold their rally in the Akademik Sakharov Avenue at 14.00. It will be possibly attended by 30,000 people.
But the smallest rally on February 4 (up to 1,500 people) will be staged in the Pushkinskaya Square; it will be held by the Russian Liberal Democratic Party with its permanent leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky under the slogan “For clean and honest democracy”.
Police takes additional security measures in connection with mass actions. “To ensure law and order during authorized mass events, 9,000 Moscow police officers will be involved, reported the press service of the Moscow police department.