MOSCOW, February 20. /TASS/. Anti-Maidan movement is to hold a mass rally in the center of Moscow on Saturday under the motto of We Won’t Forget, We Won’t Forgive. The rally will mark an anniversary of victory of the Maidan movement in Ukraine when then President Viktor Yahukovych had to abandon his position.
The Moscow City Mayor’s Office has issued permission for holding an up-to-10,000-strong gathering which is supposed to embrace representatives of 20 public movements supporting Anti-Maidan ideas, which seek to prevent "colour revolutions" and unfolding of a "Ukrainian scenario" in Russia. The movement has been focused on rallies but in the future it is ready to fend off the "fifth column."
On January 15 the creation of Anti-Maidan movement was announced. Its initiative group embraced representatives of the Combat Brotherhood, the Afghanistan War Veterans’ Council, the Central Cossack Army and the Night Wolves club of Russian bikers. Among co-chairs of the new movement are Alexander Zaldostanov nicknamed Surgeon, the leader of Night Wolves, the writer Nikolay Starikov, co-chairman of the Great Motherland party, Dmitry Sablin, lawmaker of the Federation Council upper house of Russia’s parliament and member of Afghanistan Veterans’ Council, mixed martial arts world champion Yulia Berezikova, a deputy chairman of the United Russia faction in the State Duma, Frants Klintsevich and the Russian action movie star, Mikhail Porechenkov.
Zaldostanov, the Surgeon, said that the movement’s goal was "not to allow the dismemberment of the state, not to allow the ‘fifth column’ to dismember our country like in 90s."
"We decided to get united in the Anti-Maidan organization and to bring it home to those who are making attempts to exacerbate the situation in Russia that we are not going to permit the situation to develop along the ‘Ukrainian scenario’," Nikolay Starikov said. "So the Anti-Maidan organization is not planning to do things that certain liberalistic journalists have assigned to it, in other words, we won't become freedom stranglers as no restrictions to freedom of gatherings or expression are implied here."
"We mean to have these gatherings and expressions of alternative opinion to be held in line with Russian laws," he said.
Anti-Maidan activists have already taken to Moscow’s streets in the past. Thus in mid-January they hampered Alexey Navalny’s supporters from holding a so-called people’s gathering in Manezhnaya Square aimed to back up their opposition leader.
In recent days Anti-Maidan supporters have been coming to the Russian capital from across the country to take part in the rally. For instance, a delegation from the Urals city of Perm will bring an orange corpse of Maidan stuffed with US dollars and stained with blood flags.
"We will open it in the public and show everyone what is inside the Ukrainian coup," the activists said in a statement.
Experts compare the new movement with militia units of Communists and Social Democrats in Germany in 1930s.
"The Anti-Maidan movement presents the authorities’ attempt to create a public coalition which, using force in an informal way, would be capable to repel any attempts of opposition groups to take streets and government buildings under their control," head of the Political Studies Institute Sergey Markov told TASS adding he had no doubt such encroachments would take place.
"The US will try to organize a Maidan in Russia along the Ukrainian scenario," he said.
"Anti-Maidan is analogous to militia units of Communists and Social Democrats who counteracted combatants of the Nazi party, but only on a smaller scale," Markov said.
Boris Makarenko, the first deputy director of the Political Technology Center, said that an attempt to establish the movement "to fill the streets" runs second to the Nashi (Ours) that had a short-term life.
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