In Moscow, at least 35 people were detained at Triumfalnaya Square immediately at the beginning of the rally at 6:00 pm. Some protesters had attempted to hold a sit-in near the entrance to the Mayakovskaya metro station, which is directly across from the square and for the past year has been cordoned off by a construction barrier despite the complete lack of any actual construction for the vast majority of that time. Sitting on the ground with arms linked, the protesters called for “a Russia without Putin” and “freedom to political prisoners.”

According to eyewitnesses, police threw journalists out of their path, surrounded the protesters, unlinked their arms and dragged them along the ground, all amidst cries of “fascists!” from the onlooking crowd, towards a row of police buses.

Those detained included members of the opposition movement Solidarity, the Other Russia political party, the Left Front opposition group, and others.

One Other Russia activist, Simon Verdiyan, was reportedly severely beaten by police officers in a bus on its way to the Presnenskoe police precinct.

Another 22 ralliers attempted to stage a sit-in around the Triumfalnaya Square construction barrier. In an unprecedented move, police refrained from arresting Strategy 31 co-organizer and Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov when he joined the sit-in. In general, Limonov is arrested immediately upon arriving at Strategy 31 rallies.

A Kasparov.ru correspondent reported that other protesters gradually joined in the sit-in, which at 6:40 pm numbered at about 60 people.

Some activists taking part in the sit-in, led by Limonov, then began to march towards the nearby Peking Hotel but were stopped by police. Limonov and one of his guards were allowed to pass after the Other Russia leader explained that he was trying to reach his car to go home. The remaining marchers were ordered to disperse.

Remarkably, the remaining sit-in participants were allowed to sit unhindered by police for the remainder of the evening. At 8:00 pm they rose and, promising to return, left the square.

Police did arrest a group of “provocateurs” who, according to Kasparov.ru, “tried to give money to oppositionists and bystanders,” as if they were being paid to partake in the rally. Members of pro-Kremlin youth groups are often found at opposition rallies spreading false rumors that ralliers are paid by Westerners to spoil Russia’s image abroad.

The arrested oppositionists were charged with a variety of offences, including violating order at a rally, disobeying police orders, and petty hooliganism. Like the overwhelming majority of previous Strategy 31 rallies, Wednesday’s event was not granted official sanction from Moscow city authorities, thus rendering the rally illegal. However, as of late Wednesday night, chief organizer Eduard Limonov had not been arrested and there were no reports of detainees being charged with participation in or organization of an unsanctioned rally.

According to Moscow city police, only 12 people had been detained, 8 of whom they say were “consciously blocking pedestrian and automobile traffic on Triumfalnaya Square.”

The day before the rally, as is routine, Triumfalnaya Square was completely surrounded by police buses in order to transfer detainees to the police station the following evening.

Sixty-six people were detained at the previous Strategy 31 rally in Moscow on July 31.

In St. Petersburg, 40 out of the approximately 300 Strategy 31 protesters holding a sit-in at Gostiny Dvor were detained, including United Civil Front Executive Director Olga Kurnosova. According to Gazeta.ru, police literally lifted the protesters from the ground and carried them into police buses, all in under two minutes.

In addition, 10 out of a separate group of 20 Strategy 31 ralliers at Dvortsovaya Square were also arrested.

Like in Moscow, St. Petersburg city authorities refused to sanction Wednesday’s rally, despite being for the first time in the history of Strategy 31 under a new governor – acting Governor Georgy Poltavchenko. Oppositionists had hoped that the transfer of highly unpopular United Russia Governor Valentina Matvienko to her new post as Federation Council Speaker might give the city government a chance to rethink its attitude towards adhering to Russians’ constitutional right to free assembly.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held on Wednesday in dozens of other cities across Russia.

In Saratov, Rostov-on-Don and Nizhny Novgorod, small protests of about 30 people each were held without any police crackdown. In comparison, 16 people were arrested at July’s Strategy 31 rally in Nizhny Novgorod, with three sentenced to five days of administrative arrest each. Rostov-on-Don city authorities refused to sanction the rally on the basis that someone had come four minutes earlier asking for a permit to hold their own rally “to inform citizens about electoral legislation.” Whoever this person was, they didn’t show up Wednesday evening at rally location.

Five people were detained at a rally in Ryazan, where local authorities also refused to sanction the event at its location in a central city square, proposing that it be moved to the outskirts.

On August 30, police arrested oppositionist Aleksei Panov in Arkhangelsk, supposedly for an unpaid fine. Panov insists that the arrest was politically motivated in order to prevent the next day’s protest.

In addition, reports also surfaced on Wednesday that one of the organizers of Strategy 31 in Yekaterinburg, Yevgeny Legedin, has left Russia and is attempting to gain political asylum in Great Britain. Criminal charges of slander were filed against Legedin on July 15, but the oppositionist insists that the charges were politically motivated. He is currently awaiting a response from British authorities.

Legedin’s arrest comes after the conviction of Yekaterinburg’s other Strategy 31 leader, local Yabloko party deputy Maksim Petlin, on slander charges. Petlin, who is currently sitting out a two-month jail sentence, also maintains that the case against him was fabricated.

Despite the absence of both organizers, oppositionists in Yekaterinburg held a Strategy 31 rally Wednesday night.

Per tradition, Strategy 31 rallies are held on the 31st date of the month in dozens of cities throughout Russia in honor of the 31st article of the Russian constitution, which guarantees freedom of assembly. They often end with activists being beaten and detained by police.

“The Communists, for example, gather many people at their demonstrations, and we will close streets and squares for them. But if it’s a few dozen debauchers who gather for the sake of their own scandalous behavior, then it would be illogical to close a prospect for them,” Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin told a roundtable of journalists on June 4.

“Many event organizers act on the logic of ‘we want to hold an event only where we’re not allowed to, and the Constitution does not give you the right to ban it,” he added.

Sobyanin’s words echoed those of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, who in December 2010 commented on protests by “dissenters,” saying that “they don’t want to hold events – they want a conflict with the authorities.”

Human rights advocates called on Mayor Sobyanin to not make arbitrary decisions and simply to obey the law. “It wouldn’t be bad for the mayor of Moscow to know that the constitution has no concept of ‘scandalous behavior’ or ‘debaucher,'” said Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva.

According to Kommersant, this is the first time that Sobyanin has expressed his attitude towards large-scale demonstrations since becoming mayor in October 2010. He has previously mostly mentioned two opposition campaigns – the Day of Wrath and Strategy 31 – the organizers of which are consistently embattled by the city.

Strategy 31 demonstrations are held on the 31st date of each month in dozens of cities across Russia in defense of the 31st article of the constitution, guaranteeing freedom of assembly. For a year and a half, up until October 2010, Moscow city authorities refused to sanction the demonstrations on the centrally-located Triumfalnaya Square, and protesters were routinely beaten by police and arrested en masse. While city authorities sometimes say that the demonstrations would always have been sanctioned if organizers moved them to other locations, oppositionists insist that the alternatives proposed by the city would have rendered the protests invisible to the public.

Previously, Day of Wrath protests were held on the 12th day of each month across from the Moscow mayor’s office on Tverskaya Ulitsa, intended as a venue for people to express their collective grievances against the authorities. The city never sanctioned the protests and their participants were regularly arrested by police. In February 2011, organizers decided to relocate to Teatralnaya Ulitsa, and the rally was sanctioned for the first time ever.

Update 06/01/11: Number of detainees in Moscow updated; note of Toronoto rally added.

Russian opposition activists held rallies in defense of free assembly in dozens of cities across the country on Tuesday in the latest iteration of the Strategy 31 campaign. As usual, dozens of demonstrators were arrested in cities where local authorities refused to grant permission for the rallies.

In Moscow, an estimated 60 people were detained at an unsanctioned rally on Triumfalnaya Square, including, as has become customary, Other Russia party leader and rally co-organizer Eduard Limonov, Solidarity co-leader Ilya Yashin, and Left Front leaders Sergei Udaltsov and Konstantin Kosyakin. According to photojournalist Ilya Varlamov, it was very difficult to estimate the number of attendants, but it was likely no more than 300.

In a break from recent tradition, Limonov’s Strategy 31 rally was the only one held in Moscow on Tuesday. Leading Russian human rights advocate and former Strategy 31 co-organizer Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who for the past several months has successfully received official approval to hold her own Strategy 31 rallies, has chosen to organize different demonstrations on different days of the month.

The first to arrive on Triumfalnaya Square were Yashin, Udaltsov and Kosyakin, for whom Strategy 31 rallies usually with their detentions by police. This time was no different, as the three were arrested before they even had a chance to speak to clamoring television reporters – OMON riot police forced their way through a group of journalists to reach the opposition leaders. Similarly, Limonov was arrested as soon as he climbed out of his car.

Another traditional participant of the Strategy 31 rallies, Boris Nemtsov, was this time in Nizhny Novgorod, where activists held their own rally in defense of free assembly. Nemtsov, who came to the rally accompanied by his mother, signed several copies of his report “Putin. Results” for those present. Local police made no attempts to detain him.

“Recently, everyone has argued so much that it’s unclear how many people were coming and what they were going to do,” a rallier on Triumfalnaya Square told Gazeta.ru. Protesters did seem less prepared than usual – no flags or posters were seen in the crowd, and only a handful of people had badges with the number 31 pinned to their shirts. At the same time, organizers say that a demand for free and fair elections has officially been added to the Strategy 31 campaign.

Because Triumfalnaya Square itself continues to be blocked off for construction, ralliers were forced to gather along the bordering sidewalks – until police set upon them from both sides. Many were brutally pushed around; one woman cried out into the crowd, “they have no wives, that’s why they grope us!”

Cries of “freedom!” and “shame!” also sounded from the crowd, but police had almost entirely cleared the square of oppositionists half an hour after the rally had begun.

On the other side of the square, a small group of environmental activists calling for the defense of the Khimki Forest and representatives of a group called the Free Radicals tried to hold a small march, but were literally thrown to the ground by police after only 10 meters. Police then began to carry off the demonstrators; Sergei Konstantinov, head of the Free Radicals, howled at the top of his lungs until police brought him out of the view of journalists.

Police figures cite 26 detainees altogether on Triumfalnaya Square Tuesday night, while rally organizers put the number at 60. As usual, rally leaders are being charged with organizing an unsanctioned demonstration. They face up to 15 days of administrative arrest.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held in dozens of other Russian cities, some with arrests. In St. Petersburg, approximately 100 demonstrators were detained, including at least one minor, at two unsanctioned demonstrations. A heavy police and separate “monitoring” presence was noted at a rally in Omsk, and protesters were forced to hold solitary pickets in Blagoveshchensk after local authorities refused to sanction a larger demonstration – on the basis that 500 visiting Chinese children were scheduled to play in the square.

Rallies in solidarity were also held in New York City, Toronto, London and Rome.

Article compiled from reports by Gazeta.ru and Kasparov.ru.

On May 17, the advocacy project GayRussia.Ru posted the official letter sent to the parade’s organizers explaining the city’s decision. “At the current time, the government of Moscow is receiving numerous messages from representatives of state government agencies and subjects of the Russian Federation, religious denominations, public organizations, the Cossacks, and individual citizens asking that we not allow such public events to be held,” the letter reads. “In the opinion of many respondents, the parade could bring about a wave of protests that could snowball into mass violations of public order.”

Moscow gay rights leader Nikolai Alekseev said the permit request had been filed with city authorities on April 12. “It was done a day after the verdict from the European Court of Human Rights saying that Moscow’s bans of three gay parades from 2006-2008 were illegal went into effect,” he said, referring to the court’s October 2010 ruling that the Russian authorities had violated three articles of the European Convention on Human Rights by banning the parades.

Alekseev stressed that “the government of the capital and Mayor Sobyanin personally will be responsible for any possible disorder in the center of Moscow on May 28. We intend to uphold our right to peaceful assembly, even without the permission of the authorities.”

He also said that he plans to appeal the ban and that gay rights activists intend to send a letter to President Dmitri Medvedev asking permission to hold the parade next to the Kremlin in the Alexander Gardens.

In addition, a press release on GayRussia.Ru says that activists are appealing to world governments asking them to ban homophobic Russian government representatives from entering their countries.

In Alekseev’s words, a list of 487 politicians, civil servants, and public figures, 100 judges, 19 government agencies and 40 parties, movements and organizations that the activists have deemed are homophobic will be sent to the European Union and other democratic countries for them to consider whether they want to offer entry visas to people who openly promote hatred of sexual minorities and don’t share the fundamental values of a free democratic society.

The list includes Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Federation Council Chairman Sergei Mironov, the United Russia party, the Communist party, the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia, the Foreign Ministry, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Justice Ministry, the Prosecutor General’s Office, the entire makeup of the Constitutional Court, and others.

Update 04/01/11: Information added about protests at Dvortsovaya Square and in Ryazan.

Opposition rallies were held throughout Russia on Thursday as thousands of activists and human rights advocates continued to support the Strategy 31 campaign in defense of free assembly.

In Moscow, two separate rallies were held per recent tradition. Between 300 and 1000 people joined Strategy 31 co-leader Lyudmila Alexeyeva for a government-sanctioned rally at Pushkin Square, where the longtime rights advocate spoke alongside fellow advocate Lev Ponomarev, environmental activist Yevgeniya Chirikova, and others.

Moscow city police estimated the crowd at 150 ralliers and 150 journalists.

Only one person appears to have been arrested at the rally. Someone dressed as a pigeon was taken away after rally organizers told police it could be a possible act of provocation.

Further up the street at Triumfalnaya Square, Strategy 31 founder and Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov attempted to hold his own, unsanctioned rally. According to Kasparov.ru, government officials turned down Limonov’s application to hold the rally on the basis that a pro-Kremlin youth group had already been given permission to hold a rally in support of blood drives, dubbed “Donor Day,” at the same place and time. However, the publication noted that no such activists were seen on Thursday at the square.

Police blocked off Triumfalnaya early in the day and did not allow ralliers to congregate on the square in general. “They’ve begun to kick everyone out. Standing here is prohibited!” photojournalist Ilya Varlamov wrote on Twitter from Triumfalnaya Square at 5:32 pm, half an hour before the rally was scheduled to begin.

Limonov was arrested immediately upon arrival. “They say I shouted a slogan: ‘respect the constitution of the Russian Federation,'” Limonov told reporters from a police station. “I don’t know since when that became a violation of the law.” Co-organizer Konstantin Kosyakin was also arrested.

Police periodically pushed ralliers out of the square and eventually towards the metro while arresting dozens of others. An estimated 36-50 people were arrested altogether.

Solidarity activist Dmitri Monakhov, who had apparently gone to buy a hotdog, was detained while on line at a Stardogs stand.

During the rally, several unknown young people managed to unfurl banners reading “Hooray! Nutcases, go! Strategy 32” on buildings high above the square but were subsequently arrested.

Around 7:00 pm, about 50 protesters began to march down Tverskaya Ulitsa towards the Kremlin, blocking traffic in the process. Police arrested several of the marchers, five of whom were reportedly beaten severely.

One beaten activist, Dmitri Putenikhin, is currently being held for 48 hours and has been issued a summons from a military enlistment office on the basis of his “prior offenses.” However, human rights advocate Andrei Babushkin told Kasparov.ru that the summons was counterfeit.

According to oppositionist Oleg Kozlovsky, activist Sergei Konstantinov was taken away from a police station in an ambulance due to wounds from police.

An activist detained in the Presnenskoe police station reported by Twitter that police were confiscating the cellphones of detainees.

Presidential human rights advisor Mikhail Fedotov told Interfax that he saw no problems with how police treated Strategy 31 participants. “Everything that I saw on Triumfalnaya Square was organized entirely civilly. They acted very carefully. I saw how several young people who decided to hop around on the scaffolding with a banner were taken down and brought to a bus by the hand. Precisely by the hand,” he said.

Many more people were arrested at two unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies in St. Petersburg.

By various estimates, between 1000-2000 people began marching from Gostiny Dvor along Nevsky Prospekt at 6:00 pm, shouting “it’s our city, “Russia for the political prisoners,” “freedom,” and “Petersburg without Matviyenko,” referring to Governor Valentina Matviyenko.

The marchers initially walked along the sidewalk, but later spilled into the street. They were blocked by police after about 300-400 meters, at which point officers began arresting marchers. According to local Solidarity leader Olga Kurnosova, about 200 people were detained.

Just before 7:00 pm, opposition leader Boris Nemtsov announced to the crowd that the rally was over and attempted to leave on a trolleybus. However, police blocked the bus and dragged Nemtsov out, arresting both him and fellow oppositionist Ilya Yashin.

Earlier in the day, Nemtsov had presented his newly printed report “Putin. Corruption” at a press conference in St. Petersburg. The 40-page document is drawn from open source material and concludes that “corruption in Russia has ceased to be a problem and has become a system.”

Oleg Vorotnikhov of the art activist group Voina was arrested and severely beaten while in detention. Police have reportedly taken away his young son Kasper and are threatening to take away his parental rights altogether. Fellow Voina activists Leonid Gegen and Ira Putilova were also detained.

Other detainees included two journalists from Moscow, a journalist and cameraperson from Georgia’s Channel One, and a Swedish woman who does not understand Russian.

At least one person was taken away from a police station in an ambulance.

Approximately 200 people took part in a second unsanctioned Strategy 31 rally at Dvortsovaya Square, including members of the liberal Yabloko party and human rights advocates. Organizers say the rally was calm and encountered no police interference.

Other Strategy 31 rallies were held throughout Russia’s regions, including in Vladivostok, Saratov, Kurgan, Ulan-Ude, Penza, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Chelyabinsk, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Kirov, Ryazan, and others.

At least 25 people were detained at an unsanctioned rally in Nizhny Novgorod. Activists were arrested immediately upon reaching the meeting place; several were beaten by police.

A rally in Rostov-on-Don was only successful after activists managed to obtain a court order forcing the local government to sanction it. All previous attempts to hold Strategy 31 events in the city had been blocked.

According to Kasparov.ru, authorities in Rostov-on-Don nevertheless attempted to hinder the rally by arresting its various organizers for “hooliganism.” Boris Batiy was sentenced to 3 days in jail and only released on the eve of the rally, Other Russia leader Grigory Elizarov was arrested for 7 days and will not be released until April 2, and local Left Front leader Vladislav Ryazantsev was forcibly placed in a psychiatric ward on March 30, despite having no history of psychological problems.

Approximately 100 people came out to the first-ever Strategy 31 rally in Volgograd. Police observed the event, filming and taking pictures from the sidelines. Participants spoke out against plans by the City Duma to get rid of direct mayoral elections.

Activists from Solidarity and other organizations held solitary pickets in Kirov since their application to hold a Strategy 31 rally was denied by the city government.

About 60 people came to a protest in Ryazan, where organizers spoke about censorship over the local media by Governor Oleg Kovalev that prevents them from informing the public about opposition demonstrations.

On March 28, Ponomarev wrote in his blog that the rights activists will be taking up another cause in place of the defense of free assembly. “We are proposing holding a last rally under the name of ‘Movement 31’ or ‘Strategy 31.’ In the future, we won’t be holding rallies on the 31st date. We have diverged in concept from [Strategy 31 co-founder Eduard] Limonov’s group and propose no longer using the 31st date; moreover, our very concept of a rally is changing,” he said.

The group of activists now plans to lend their support to an initiative to ban United Russia – the country’s largest party, led by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin – that has sprung up in the city of Izhevsk.

“We have discussed this issue with lawyers and found that there is no direct legal path to liquidate United Russia, but in places it’s possible to set up organizational structures in case they violate the law,” Ponomarev explained.

The activists say they wish to hold rallies to this end on a regular basis but not latch onto a specific date.

“Our task is to unite the forces of all those who are dissatisfied with the political system that has been created and who are prepared to take control of future elections,” Ponomarev added.

According to Kasparov.ru, 1200 people gathered at a rally in Izhevsk on March 19 to support a ban on United Russia. At the end of the rally, participants issued a call for “the citizens of Russia” to begin a national campaign on April 9 to ban the party.

Until October 2010, Strategy 31 rallies in Moscow were organized by Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin, and Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov. For more than a year, the city refused to sanction the rallies and instead proposed alternative locations that would have isolated the protests from public view. The group split apart after Alexeyeva reached an agreement with city authorities to obtain sanction for a rally on Triumfalnaya Square with a limit of 800 participants. Limonov and Kosyakin insisted that no such limits should be imposed, and since then dual rallies have been held on the square on the 31st of each date – one sanctioned and one not.

Earlier this month, Alexeyeva announced that she and other human rights activists would be holding their sanctioned Strategy 31 rally on Pushkin Square, separate from Limonov’s. “We think that there will be more participants at a rally on Pushkin Square,” Alexeyeva said at the time. “In addition, we don’t want for there to be any confrontation.”

The new bill would put limits on the number of people allowed to demonstrate in the vicinity each of the city’s transportation facilities. These limits would ensure that “no less than half of a thruway can be used for vehicle transport and, when necessary, for citizens not taking part in the rally.” Any application submitted to the mayor’s office to hold a rally without consideration of these limits would be rejected.

The Russian constitution only requires organizers to notify local authorities that they are holding a rally, leading many critics to argue that Moscow’s policy of turning down certain applications is unconstitutional. Nevertheless, unsanctioned rallies are often violently repressed by the police.

The city administration said the bill is an attempt to deal with Moscow’s paralyzing traffic jams, which Mayor Sergei Sobyanin named as one of his top priorities after being appointed last October. But the limits would have no effect on state-sponsored events, limiting only opposition and other independent demonstrations. The city’s traditional St. Patrick’s Day parade, for example, was cancelled this year, ostensibly for the same reason.

According to Eduard Limonov, leader of the Other Russia party and co-organizer of the opposition’s Strategy 31 rally campaign, this is not the first time the government has tried to impose limits on the number of participants in rallies – but it is the first time they’re trying to put it into law.

Former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov has argued that Strategy 31 rallies should not be held in their traditional meeting place – Triumfalnaya Square – out of concern for people’s safety, but at the same time has granted sanction to pro-Kremlin youth groups to rally in larger numbers on the same square.

Limonov said the new bill is connected to the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and that the Russian authorities are trying to “tighten the screws” out of a fear of public demonstrations.

In their written response to newly-instated Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, Strategy 31 organizers insisted on having at least 1500 people be allowed to rally on Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square. A construction barrier, which was recently erected around the square and a monument to Soviet writer Vladimir Mayakovsky, should be taken down in order to make more room for the protesters, they said.

“It’s possible, if they take down the fence surrounding the monument, where there’s no construction going on,” reads the letter. “Ten days left before the 31st, that’s entirely enough time to do this.”

The Moscow mayor’s office agreed yesterday for the first time in the year-and-a-half history of Strategy 31 to grant sanction for opposition protesters to gather on Triumfalnaya Square. However, the rallies have traditionally consisted of more than 1000 protesters, problematizing the city’s proposal to allow only 200 to gather.

Aleksandr Averin of the Other Russia opposition party told Kasparov.ru that rally organizers received a proposal from the mayor’s office on Wednesday to hold the rally on either Pushkin Square, Bolotnaya Square or a small strip of Triumfalnaya Square between the Peking Hotel and Brestskaya Street.

“The problem is that the authorities are prepared to sanction a rally numbering 200 people in this section, and not 1500,” he noted.

Averin said that the three Strategy 31 organizers – former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin – would announce their official response to the city’s proposal on Thursday.

Days earlier, online newspaper Gazeta.ru reported that the pro-Kremlin youth organization Young Russia has received permission to hold a rally to promote giving blood – but not an actual blood drive – also on Triumfalnaya Square on October 31.

Young Russia’s application had originally proposed holding the event on either Triumfalnaya or Pushkin Squares, “but the mayor’s office agreed to have our action be held precisely on Triumfalnaya,” said the organization’s press secretary, Natalia Maslova.

Opposition activists have maintained for months that rallies organized by pro-Kremlin youth movements for the same date, time, and place as Strategy 31 events are simply attempts to take up the space so that oppositionists are unable to use it.

The fact that the Moscow mayor’s office only agreed to let 200 people rally on Triumfalnaya may be connected with recent comments by prominent Kremlin ideologist Vladislav Surkov – comments that do not bode well for the future of the opposition’s movement.

Following the dismissal of longtime Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, Surkov spoke in an interview with the business magazine Vzglyad about the controversy surrounding Triumfalnaya Square. Surkov called the Strategy 31 protesters “virtual heroes and martyrs” who “really couldn’t organize anything,” and said that “any new [Moscow] government, per Russian tradition, will show generosity.”

“We are completely unconcerned with such events,” Surkov went on. “For a democratic state, they are completely normal. The main thing is that everything be done according to the law. If two hundred people in Moscow, a city of many millions of people, want to gather without fail on the 31st date and without fail on Triumfalnaya – let them gather.”

Since Strategy 31 events are regularly attended by upwards of one thousand protesters, Surkov’s statement that only 200 would want to gather on Triumfalnaya may be based on police statistics of the number of rally attendees, which are often much lower than the attendance as reported by independent media sources and opposition organizers.

Surkov went on to say that “the opposition should not get the feeling that everything is permitted to them. They aren’t permitted everything.”

“Over the course of these past few years, all of the actions of the city authorities and the Moscow police in regards to all street actions, all rallies and marches, sanctioned and unsanctioned, have been lawful and correct,” Surkov argued. “I would say – irreproachable. I’m sure that this is how it will be in the future.”

The actions that Surkov has judged as “irreproachable” include scheming to deny oppositionists space to hold their events and calling out riot police and internal military forces to brutally beat and detain hundreds of peaceful protesters.

In an interview with the paper published on August 30, the prime minister spoke of the opposition using notably dirty language and said that the actual goal of participants in the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign “is to get bludgeoned upside the head.”

Noting that permission must be obtained from city authorities to hold large rallies, Putin said that Russian oppositionists act in a way that says “we’ll do what we want, and we’re going to provoke you so that you bludgeon us upside the head. And, dousing ourselves with red paint, we’ll say that the anti-people government is acting disgracefully and is suppressing human rights.”

In June, Russia’s presidentially-appointed human rights ombudsman, Vladimir Lukin, came out with a statement that the idea that rallies require sanction from the government to be held legally is actually completely false. All that the law requires, he said, was for event organizers to give the city a declaration of their intended actions.

While Strategy 31 organizers routinely apply with the Moscow city authorities for permission to hold their rallies, it has never once been granted. Ralliers who gather despite the lack of sanction are routinely beaten by riot police and internal military forces, a trend that has drawn criticism from governments and rights organizations across the globe.

The prime minister insisted that he was unaware of Strategy 31 until his scandalous meeting with Kremlin-critical rock musician Yury Shevchuk in May, and that the decisions to disperse the rallies and to close Triumfalnaya Square (where the rallies are always held) for construction were taken without his knowledge. “I give you my honest word as a party member,” he declared in an expression harking back to Soviet times.

The decision to close Triumfalnaya Square in order to build an underground parking garage was announced in mid-August. The abrupt decision took oppositionists and Russian civil society on the whole by surprise, and many have denounced the project as an excuse to put an end to the Strategy 31 protests. According to city officials, the square will be not be reopened earlier than 2012. Despite this, Strategy 31 organizers intend to continue their rallies, with the next event scheduled for tomorrow – August 31, 2010.