According to a poll conducted by the independent Levada Center and released on March 18, the majority of the 27 percent of protest-minded Russians consisted of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 who lived in large cities such as Moscow and St. Petersburg. Middle-aged Russians who were moderately educated and had low incomes were the next largest demographic, while residents of small towns and adults with high salaries were the least likely to have any interest in demonstrations.

Expectations that large-scale protests would actually be held was up by 5 percent in the last half year, and Russians’ willingness to participate in them was up 3-4 percent, said the report.

Levada Center Deputy Director Aleksei Grazhdankin said that while the rise in pro-protest sentiments was typical for the spring, the increased belief that demonstrations of a meaningful size would actually be held was notable.

“This is explained by the fact that protests, for example in Kaliningrad, have become more visible,” said Grazhdankin. He also said that the survey indicates a marked rise in both the amount and quality of information concerning large-scale demonstrations.

In what has been dubbed the United Day of Protest, massive demonstrations are planned for Saturday in cities throughout Russia. Those taking part include a vast range of opposition parties, trade unions, human rights advocates, civic organizations, and ordinary Russians in protest against falling standards of living, suppression of human rights, unfair tariffs, environmental degradation, and the continued monopolization of the Kremlin’s United Russia party over the political life of the country. They are protesting in support of the call for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to resign.

The protest planned to take place in central Moscow on Pushkin Square has been banned by city authorities. While organizers were in negotiations with the mayor’s office on Friday, they said the demonstration would be held regardless of the outcome. Representatives of the Moscow City Police meanwhile promised that, if held, the rally would be dispersed and its organizers brought to court. Protests have also been banned under various pretenses in the cities of Kazan, Vladivostok, and Kaliningrad.

In an online interview held by the news website Gazeta.ru and published on Friday, State Duma Speaker and United Russia member Boris Gryzlov said that oppositionists were being paid large sums of money to organize protests against the government.

“There is reliable information – and as a member of the Safety Committee I know it – that sufficiently serious money is paid for participation in these rallies,” said Gryzlov during the conference. He went on to claim that oppositionists are unable to come to terms with the fact that United Russia does so well at the polls and therefore attempt to draw people out into the streets.

“It’s a dangerous development of events,” Gryzlov went on, referring to a recent increase in the size and number of anti-government demonstrations. “Here we sense the color and taste of the colored revolutions. And we sense those same ideologues that get money from a large number of non-governmental organizations from abroad, and create tension with this money that attracts specific citizens to the rallies.”

Gryzlov added that the ultimate goal of opposition parties was to “weaken the state.”

Organizers of opposition demonstrations in Russia have long been suppressed by the government. Moscow city authorities have turned down each of the half-dozen applications filed by the Other Russia opposition coalition within the past year to protest in defense of the constitutional right to freedom of assembly, including one planned for later this month, and police arrested 160 participants in a sizable demonstration last January.

Primarily, Kasparov travelled to Georgia for the 50th birthday of longtime friend and chess colleague Zurab Azmaiparashvili. The grandmaster stressed that his visit to Tbilisi was “not as a representative of the opposition, but as a chess player.” Given that, “it’s perfectly obvious that I don’t plan to turn down a meeting with the Georgian leadership,” said Kasparov. “I see nothing shameful in that.”

Kasparov met with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Tuesday at the presidential palace, where the two discussed Russia-Georgia relations and a forthcoming youth chess world championship to be held in Georgia this September. He also met on Wednesday with Speaker of Parliament David Bakradze to talk about the two countries’ relations.

Speaking with journalists afterward, Kasparov said that all that had transpired between the Georgia and Russia in recent years “is more than the mind can comprehend.” While relations severely deteriorated after the August 2008 military conflict in South Ossetia, Kasparov asserted that Russia had begun a campaign against Georgia long before.

“The eviction of Georgians, the embargo on Georgian goods – this was all part of a plan,” said Kasparov, adding that the conflict in August “had been predetermined.”

Kasparov expressed concern that Georgian opposition leaders had recently met with members of the Russian government, saying that there was nothing to be gained through negotiations while Prime Minister Vladimir Putin remained in power. “There are some things that will not change under Putin,” said Kasparov, citing as examples the imprisonment of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Russia’s presence in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. “While Putin is in the Kremlin, there cannot be any improvement in relations between Georgia and Russia,” he asserted.

That said, Kasparov was confident that no new military conflict between the two countries was on the horizon, albeit for all the wrong reasons. Referring to plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Kasparov said that “while Putin is building Sochi, there won’t be any war.” Given that Sochi lies just north of Abkhazia on the Black Sea, he explained, having a base there had always been necessary for the Russian government’s ability to organize construction for the games.

Kasparov noted that many Russians were critical of their government for its aggressive political stance towards Georgia, and stressed the importance of creating cultural contacts between citizens and civic organizations of the two countries. Referring to his own experiences in Georgia as a chess player, Kasparov explained that Russia-Georgia relations were a particularly painful topic for him. “I have many special memories connected with Tbilisi,” he said.

Considering that Russian internet service providers have blocked access to the petition from 50 percent of the country and that hacker attacks have rendered it periodically inaccessible to anyone at all, the number of Russians who agree with that statement is likely to be much higher. Nevertheless, given the number of signatures the document has received, opposition leader Garry Kasparov says he is confident that “we can already bravely confirm that any pessimistic expectations have been entirely refuted.”

In creating such a petition, explained former Deputy Prime Minister and opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the Russian opposition is hoping to achieve a series of common and long-held goals: honest elections, political competition, a parliament that serves as a venue for discussion, and a change in the ruling elite. “It is obvious that Putin will never voluntarily relinquish power in Russia,” the petition asserts. Blaming the prime minister for brutally suppressing dissent, fostering corruption, and failing to modernize and develop the country, the authors of the petition conclude that “this is a cross that Russia can bear no longer.”

A translation of the petition’s manifesto by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty is reproduced in its entirety below.

The petition in Russian can be found at Putinavotstavku.ru.

Putin Must Go
The Anti-Putin Manifesto, RFE/RL

Citizens of Russia! The recognition that the ruling elite has led our country into a historical dead end has prompted us to issue this statement.

The transfer of virtually unlimited power by the [Yeltsin-era] Family, which was trying to guarantee its own security, to a man of dubious reputation who was distinguished neither by talent nor by the requisite life or professional experience has resulted predictably in the serious degradation of all institutions of state governance.

Even a significant portion of the ruling “elite” feels that a change is necessary, as attested by the loud reaction to [President Dmitry Medvedev’s] opus “Forward, Russia!” But Medvedev’s modernization project bears a distinctly artificial character and is aimed at a single goal – to redo the decorations while maintaining the nature of an authoritatian-kleptocratic regime.

We state that the sociopolitical construction that is killing Russia and has now bound the citizens of our country has one architect, one custodian, and one guardian. His name is Vladimir Putin.

We declare that no essential reforms can be carried out in Russia today as long as Putin controls real power in the country.

We declare that the dismantling of the Putin regime and the return of Russia to the path of democratic development can only begin when Putin has been deprived of all levers of managing the state and society.

We declare that during the years of his rule, Putin has become the symbol of corrupt and unpredictable country that is pitiless in its treatment of its own citizenry. It is a country in which citizens have no rights and are for the most part in poverty. It is a country without ideals and without a future.

If, as the Kremlin propagandists love to repeat, Russia was on its knees during the Yeltsin period, then Putin and his minions have pushed its face into the filth.

In the filth of the authorities’ contempt we find not only individual rights and freedoms, but human life itself as well.

In the filth of a false and feeble imitation of political and social institutions – from the bureaucratic phantom of United Russia to the Nazi-like Putin Youth.

In the filth of soul- and mind-warping televised obscurantism that is turning one of the most educated nations in the world into a soulless, amoral mob.

In the filth of total thievery and corruption emanating from the very pinnacle of Russian power. If not for the years in which Putin roamed the galleries of the Kremlin, the billionaires of his inner circle –Abramovich, Timchenko, the Kovalchuks, Rotenberg – would not exist. Nor would the parasitical state corporations of his friends – these black holes of the Russian economy.

Having begun his rise to power with the epical statement about “wiping them out in their outhouses,” Putin over the course of nearly 11 years has used this universal “tool” of ruling the country, and it has proven particularly effective in regard to his political opponents and business competitors.

Any political, social, or economic dissent is immediately suppressed: in the best cases, by administrative restrictions, but often by the bully clubs of the riot police, by criminal prosecution, by physical violence, and even by murder. Putin has proven that he is willing to destroy his personal opponents by any means available.

During the time that Putin has been at the pinnacle of state power, everything that could be ruined has been ruined. Pension and administrative reforms have been undone. There has been no reform of the armed forces, the secret services, or the law enforcement and judicial systems. The health-care system remains in its previous, pathetic condition.

The decline of education and science, which has been farmed out to the Ozero cooperative group, has reached the point where the “titans” of Russian scientific thought must be considered people like Petrik and Gryzlov.

Ten whole years have been lost – years when a boom in hydrocarbon and metals prices could have been used to modernize the country and carry out a structural reorganization of the economy. That is why the blow of the global economic crisis hit Russia so mercilessly, and it is far from over for us.

Having been named prime minister by Yeltsin, Putin not only was unable to correct the fatal mistakes made by his predecessors and put out the flames in the Caucasus, but his policies managed to raise that conflict to a new level that is capable of destroying the integrity of the country.

The “Kursk,” the Nord-ost theater, Beslan, the tens of thousands who died in the internecine second Cacasus war, the thousands who have lost their lives in infrastructure disasters, who burned in homes for the elderly and the handicapped that were unfit for human habitation, the dozens of murdered journalists and human rights activists and political opponents of the regime, and the ordinary victims of sadistic police lawlessness – these are the gravestones of the years of Putin’s rule.

These are the unexposed secrets of the Putin regime: the [1999] entry of [Shamil] Basayev into Daghestan; the explosions of apartment buildings in Moscow and Volgodonsk; the so-called training exercise in Ryazan.

People have long since stopped being surprised by Putin’s incapacity for strategic thinking. He is unable to see what the world will be like in 10-15 years and what place Russia can and must occupy in it. He is not capable of evaluating the real threats and risks facing the country, and that means he is in no position to correctly plan possible moves or identify potential allies and rivals.

A clear illustration of these short-sighted polices are the recent surrender agreements with China, in which Putin lightly erased the Russian Far East and Siberia off the map.

Further evidence of Putin’s lack of understanding of the future is his maniacal passion to build gas and oil pipelines in all thinkable and unthinkable directions; his initiation of expensive, ambitious projects (like the Sochi Olympics and the bridge to Russian Island), which are absolutely wrong for a country in which a large portion of the population lives below the poverty line.

Having temporarily moved form the presidential chair to the prime minister’s offices and having left in the Kremlin an obedient placeholder who is “of the same blood” – a modern Simeon Bekbulatovich – Putin has created an openly unconstitutional construction for governing the country for life.

It is obvious that Putin will never voluntarily relinquish power in Russia. His fierce intention to rule for life is no longer based on a thirst for power itself so much as on the fear of being held responsible for what he has done. For the Russian people, this is humiliating. But for the country it is fatally dangerous to have a ruler like Putin. This is a cross that Russia can bear no longer.

As the Putin grouping feels it the ground falling from under its feet, it could at any moment move from targeted repression to mass repression. We are warning law enforcement and security agency officers not to stand against their nation, not to carry out criminal orders from corrupt officials when they send you out to kill us for Putin, Sechin, and Deripaska.

Now the national demand at demonstrations from Vladivostok to Kaliningrad must be the call “Putin Must Go!” Ridding ourselves of Putinism is the first, obligatory step on the path to a new, free Russia.

Khodorkovsky, known as an oligarch who was once Russia’s richest man, is currently facing new charges in a second criminal case against Yukos. He and co-defendant Platon Lebedev are accused by the Russian government of embezzling oil products in the sum of $27.5 billion, a charge the defense says is absurd and refuted by obvious, undisputed facts. Khodorkovsky’s lawyers are now planning to call on the prime minister, who is widely believed to have personally ordered Khodorkovsky’s arrest, as a witness in the case.

“Your prosecutors claim I ran Yukos not as an official chairman, but as the leader of an organized criminal group,” Khodorkovsky asks Putin. “When you discussed Yukos’s problems with me, with whom did you think you were talking?”

“Your prosecutors accuse me of stealing Yukos’ production from 1998 to 2003. When you, in 2003, personally congratulated Yukos for its successes in commercial and social activities, is this what you were referring to?” he goes on.

Responding through his lawyers, Khodorkovsky told the Independent that he believes Russian President Dmitri Medvedev to be sincere in his stated desire to fight corruption, as well as to reform the country’s law enforcement agencies and judicial system. “But reasonably soon, the president’s actions will bring him to a boundary, after which specific changes will not be possible without modernizing the political system as a whole,” he stipulated. Khodorkovsky added that whether or not Medvedev can successfully implement such modernization remains unclear.

During the interview, the imprisoned oligarch categorically denied rumors that he had been offered release under condition of leaving the country or staying out of politics.

Despite all talk of corruption, Khodorkovsky said that he does not believe the outcome of the current case against him to have been predetermined. “But whatever happens, I am going to defend my position and my innocence,” he said. Asked whether he was prepared to spend another twenty years behind bars in the case that he is found guilty and handed a maximum sentence, Khodorkovsky asserted that he doesn’t plan to despair.

Putin’s press secretary, Dmitri Peskov, told the newspaper Vedomosti that the prime minister would be informed about the letter but was unlikely to read it, let alone answer it. He added that Putin usually does not enter into dialogue with convicts.

For the Independent article in its entirety, click here.

The workers in question were brought in from all over Russia, including parts of Siberia, to building cottages for residents now being evicted from their homes to make way for new Olympic construction in Sochi’s picturesque Imeretinskaya Valley. The contractors and subcontractors who hired them have received millions of rubles from the government since December 2009, but have not paid their workers in more than three months.

The general contractor for the cottage project, Mosconversprom, said that the delays in paying the workers were largely a result of “dragged-out transfers of documents to subcontractors.” They also placed blame on Olympstroy, Russia’s state-owned corporation tasked with managing construction for the Olympics, for not sending Mosconversprom its allocated funding.

The contractors said on Monday that they were able to convince some of the workers to end their hunger strike, promising to pay them on March 24. Others continued their protest, which has now been ongoing since March 11.

Russia’s plans for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi have been controversial since then-President Vladimir Putin made the bid in 2007, but they have been pushed into the spotlight in the wake of Russia’s poor performance in the Vancouver Olympic Games. Critics have questioned the viability of holding the Olympics in Sochi, given its status of a small resort city that largely lacks the infrastructure needed for the games. Residents of hundreds of buildings in the Imeretinskaya Valley region have been protesting their eviction and the destruction of their homes, some of which have seen seven generations of the same families, for years now. The World Wildlife Foundation recently withdrew its support from the games because of ongoing environmental damage being caused to Sochi’s unique natural environment, with UNESCO and Greenpeace also vocal with similar criticisms.

As of Sunday night, official results of the elections had not yet been released.

The elections are widely being seen as a test of President Dmitri Medvedev’s stated desire to reform the country’s electoral system. Election observers and opposition parties were vehement in their denouncement of last October’s regional elections, which were fraught with accusations of blatant and widespread fraud and in which United Russia was overwhelmingly successful. The president refused to annul the elections, but he later made several proposals for reform, saying that United Russia “needs to learn how to win in an open fight.”

The prognosis so far is not very good. Reports of violations for the March 14 elections began pouring in during early voting before the elections even began. According to the Kasparov.ru online newspaper, the liberal Yabloko party was banned from running in legislative elections in every region of the country. Golos, Russia’s primary independent electoral watchdog, summarized the violations that had been reported throughout the day on Sunday: “unauthorized persons present at the polling stations, limiting the rights of voters, observers, the mass media and members of electoral commissions, as well as numerous cases of organized voting with absentee ballots, transportation of voters to polling stations, and bribing voters in some regions.”

The list of reported violations includes many that Golos is calling “typical” and that have been noted in Russian elections for years. Sunday’s reports that companies, universities, and the military have organized expeditions to voting stations and forced their members to vote for United Russia are nearly identical to reports from during Russia’s presidential election in 2008. Similar, too, was abuse of the absentee ballot system: Russians are not allowed to vote by mail, and instead are allowed to cast an absentee ballots at any polling station that they chose. Historically, the system has enabled widespread violations.

Below is a sampling of Golos’ 461 recorded allegations of voter fraud and electoral violations.

• Ostrogozhsk. Journalist Oleg Demidov from the Grazhdansky Golos newspaper was attacked by three unknown assailants who broke his camera. The police refused to detain the assailants and instead took Demidov to the police station. Additionally, photographs of United Russia candidates had been hung on the walls of several of the town’s voting stations.

• Yekaterinburg. Workers at the Uralmash machine manufacturer were transported to voting stations and ordered by their managers to vote for United Russia. It is worth noting that Uralmash’s largest stockholder is Gazprombank, which is owned by the government-controlled oil giant Gazprom.

• Yekaterinburg. Workers at the Pnevmostroymashina factory were ordered to vote for United Russia by absentee ballot at a polling station designated by the company, and to photograph their ballot while they were in the voting booth to show to management the next day.

• Berezovsky. A bus was observed carrying voters from the nearby city of Yekaterinburg who came to the town, voted by absentee ballot and then left.

• Ivanovo. Fifty students at the Ivanovo Academy of Chemistry complained that the school had ordered them “to fulfill your constitutional right to vote early” and vote on March 11 for United Russia. They were also told “not to tempt fate, and, in the case that you don’t vote for the designated candidate, not to hope for a favorable attitude towards you in the future. Political myopia will be the basis for your expulsion from the university and troubles of a similar perspective.”

• Astrakhan. Unknown persons parked a car next to a polling station that was located nearby a building known for its beleaguered residents, and were distributing vodka in exchange for pledges of votes. The report did not specify what party the residents were asked to vote for.

• Krasnodarsky Krai. A banner printed with “United Russia” was hung above the entrance to a voting station. According to the newspaper Novaya Gazeta, vodka and other hard liquor was being sold under the banner.

• Tula. After the fact, votes were noticed to have been cast by people known to be dead. Observers also noted that 500 ruble (about $17) coupons were being distributed to people in exchange for their promises to vote for United Russia. Additionally, journalists were barred from entering voting stations, and election observers were forced off the grounds of the local electoral commission.

• Ryazan. Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) candidate Yevgeny Dronov attempted to intervene when he saw people paying voters to cast their ballots for United Russia candidate Oleg Maslyuk. Immediately afterwards, several young men jumped out of an approaching car and began to beat him. The police officer who arrived at the scene refused to detain the assailants, failing even to ask for their identification.

• Ryazan. In an apparent attempt to humiliate the LDPR, unknown agitators were seen handing out bags of groceries printed with the LDPR logo.

• Yekaterinburg. Vladimir Mostovshchikov, electoral commission representative for of Sverdlovskaya region, announced on a local television channel that voters holding temporary registrations should feel free to vote wherever they wanted to even without using absentee ballots – which is illegal. He later attempted to deny that he said this, but Golos maintains that they have proof of the statement.

• Irkutsk. A court decision on Friday evening eliminated one of the main electoral candidates, but the candidate’s name was unable to be removed from the ballot in time. Voters and electoral commissioners alike were confused as a result.

• Omsk. Journalists were barred from entering a number of polling stations, and some were confined to areas designated for the media from which it was impossible to observe the electoral commission’s work. Despite this, journalists did note several instances of ballot stuffing.

The newspaper quoted Sergei Filatov, leader of the liberal Yabloko party, as having obtained photographs and video of how the votes were paid for: In a car parked next to a voting station in Tula School #52, unknown persons wrote down voters’ information and then paid them in cash after completing the early voting process.

According to Filatov, voters were given 500 rubles (about $17) to vote for United Russia, and 100 rubles ($3.40) to vote for A Just Russia, an opposition party loyal to the Kremlin.

Some voters had complained that they did not receive the money promised to them after voting, since the car had taken off by the time they were done. Other witnesses have filed statements with the local police bureau confirming that a massive campaign to buy up votes was apparently underway. Yabloko, meanwhile, is preparing to file a complaint with the regional electoral committee.

Moreover, a Kommersant correspondent reported that agitators from United Russia had come to his house the day before, offering 300 rubles ($10.24) to vote for their party.

The news is the latest in a number of controversial incidents involving the upcoming elections. A number of opposition parties have been altogether banned from ballot in various cities, and others have been facing pressure from the Central Electoral Commission.

Regional elections are set to take place throughout Russia on March 14, and follow last October’s scandalous regional elections that triggered an unprecedented walkout by opposition party leaders in the State Duma in light of widespread allegations of voter fraud. President Dmitri Medvedev admitted at the time that the elections were “not sterile,” but refused to annul them all the same.

The leaflet in question picture Sergei Mironov, who heads the party A Just Russia and is also speaker of the parliamentary Federation Council, and calls on voters to “fight against administrative power.” The Central Electoral Commission (TsIK) ruled on Wednesday that picturing Mironov violates electoral regulations that prohibit public officials from taking advantage of their official positions.

TsIK member Yevgeny Kolyushin of the Communist Party pointed out, however, that there had been complaints that the Kremlin-backed United Russia party was using pictures of President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin the same way on their own promotional posters. If A Just Russia had violated electoral regulations, then United Russia clearly did as well.

According to TsIK representative Vladimir Churov, this was not the case: United Russia had every right to use the images of the president and prime minister. United Russia member Sergei Kostenko, who holds a non-voting seat on the TsIK, explained that since neither Medvedev nor Putin were not directly identified on the posters as president or prime minister, no laws were violated.

A representative of A Just Russia argued that Mironov himself was not identified as Federation Council Speaker on the party’s leaflets, but the TsIK insisted that the phrase “administrative power” along with Mironov’s face was an indication of his post all the same. The decision was made apparently in spite of the fact that if the TsIK was correct, then A Just Russia’s leaflets would actually be implying that voters should fight against its party’s own leader, as opposed to looking to Mironov as someone who will fight against administrative authority.

Mironov, who is a long-time Putin ally, became embroiled in political scandal last month when he criticized the prime minister’s budget. A volley of colorful back-and-forth insults began to fly between A Just Russia and United Russia, and Mironov declared that he would be moving his party more towards the actual opposition. While the opposition itself had a mixed reaction to the controversy, some analysts argued that for Mironov to see criticizing Putin as politically advantageous was at least indicative that the prime minister’s famously high popularity was not as safe as it once was.

A Just Russia is not the only party facing a government crackdown in the run-up to the elections. The Sverdlovsk regional election committee has banned the opposition parties Yabloko and Just Cause from appearing on the ballot, arguing that more than half of the signatures submitted with Yabloko’s application were “unauthentic” or “invalid.”

The March 14 elections will follow regional elections last October that were fraught with accusations of gross violations that gave United Russia sweeping wins across the country. A Just Russia was among three opposition parties at the time that staged a walkout from the State Duma, protesting blatant cases of fraud that independent bloggers were able to statistically document. President Dmitri Medvedev met with party leaders in response, but insisted that although the elections were “not sterile,” they would not be annulled.

Igor Bolotov of the Russian Ministry for Regional Development said on Wednesday that one trillion rubles (about $33.8 billion) would be required to modernize one hundred of the country’s so-called “monotowns,” small to mid-size Stalin-era establishments almost entirely dependent on a single industry. This dependency has made them particularly prone to the global economic crisis, threatening total economic collapse for the town if just one company goes under.

As opposed to the trillion cited by Bolotov, the government’s 2010 allocation for the struggling provincial outposts is only 25 billion ($846 million) – a number that is itself far below the 100 billion ($3.38 billion) estimated last August for a federal development program.

Additionally, investment programs have only been developed for 27 monotowns, 24 of which are currently being reworked. Only 8 of these programs, Bolotov noted, are focused on creating new industries, and only 11 include proposals for modernization. “But they do not solve the problem of single-industry,” he said.

Bolotov’s comments came ahead of Thursday’s session of a government commission on monotowns in the industrial city of Tolyatti. They also stand in stark contrast to President Dmitri Medvedev’s statement last November that plans for developing monotowns was one of the government’s primary concerns.

In his turn, Vice Prime Minister Aleksandr Zhukov said he was certain that the country’s monotowns could overcome their problems and become “points of growth” for innovative economics in the post-crisis period.

Monotowns became a widely discussed topic in the Russian media last May, when residents of the town of Pikalevo blocked a federal highway to gain attention to their desperate economic situation. Workers had been left with long unpaid wages after the town’s three aluminum plants shut down without warning, and the situation was only rectified after Prime Minister Vladimir Putin staged a personal intervention to ensure that the factories were reopened.

See also: • Darkness on the Edge of Monotown, New York Times

The news broke Tuesday morning when the Russian media picked up on a YouTube video posted by Moscow resident Stanislav Sutyagin, who detailed what happened in the incident.

“On March 5, an acquaintance and I were driving in a Mercedes on the MKAD,” says Sutyagin. “Before reaching Yaroslavskoye Highway, we saw several highway patrol vehicles that were stopping everybody. At the moment I was in the leftmost lane, and when we were signaled to stop.”

“They asked me to turn the car a bit sideways, and naturally we did so,” Sutyagin goes on. “Giving no further explanation, the police parked their cars behind ours, and after literally a few minutes, a silver Audi flew by and grazed my car as well as the black Volga parked next to me. After that, the police got into their cars and continued the pursuit.”

Sutyagin then explains that an officer directed him to a police outpost, where he was told that there had been a special operation to detain a number of armed and wanted criminals. Sutyagin and the other drivers, he was told, had been used as human shields in an attempt to stop their car. “I have a question for the traffic police,” said Sutyagin in his video. “What if the car had been hit differently? Either I or my acquaintance could have died, or somebody else,” he says. “And what if the criminals stopped – they easily could have begun shooting. Are our lives really worth nothing in our Russian state?”

One of the most outrageous aspects of the incident, says Sutyagin, was that a car carrying a pregnant woman about to give birth was among those used for the barricade. The car sustained light damage in the incident.

Sutyagin said that the police refused to offer compensation for damage to his car. “The most interesting thing was that they told us directly: ‘Guys, you’re not going to get any compensation – in the end, they didn’t catch the car, it got away. And we asked you to stop – so what?’”

Noting that car repairs are far more expensive than the fine for failing to stop for police, and that a human life has no price at all, Sutyagin concluded that he plans to risk the fine in future situations.

Maksim Galushko, a spokesperson for the Moscow traffic police, told Gazeta.ru that the agency had learned about the incident through the media. “We’re dealing with it,” he said. No official confirmation or denial that the highway patrol had created a human shield to stop armed criminals had been issued as of Tuesday afternoon.

Journalists were also unable to reach the highway patrol division noted by Sutyagin in his video as responsible for the incident.

Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow division of the Russian Federation of Automobile Owners, said that police had created a human shield in a similar incident a year and a half ago in Moscow. “Luckily, the drivers refused to stop across the road, despite threats that they were forfeiting their rights,” he said.

“I recommended at the time that those involved in the incident should complaint to the prosecutor’s office, warning that “it will happen again,’” Kanayev said. “They decided not to complain – and it happened again.”

The allegations are just the latest in a long-running slew of unsavory incidents involving the Russian police. Russian President Dmitri Medvedev says that reform of the country’s notoriously corrupt law enforcement agencies is a top priority, firing dozens of police officials in the past couple of months and calling for higher wages. One thousand activists rallying for police reform in Moscow on Saturday were less than thrilled with the president’s efforts, criticizing the government for its persecution of whistleblowing cops that have attempted to expose systemic corruption.

Sutyagin’s video can be viewed in Russian by clicking here.