Days later, Putin chastised his party – United Russia, which holds a political monopoly over the country and of which Boos is a member – for making false promises to voters. “You cannot promise everything to everyone all at once,” he said. “You can’t turn into promisers who make promises only in order to pull the wool over people’s eyes, force their way into government agencies, and then just deal with their own problems.”

On Monday, United Russia published its list of recommended nominees for Kaliningrad governor – and the list excluded Boos. The reason, said party secretary Vyacheslav Volodin, was a lack of popular support. “For us, the opinion of voters is the law,” he said.

Former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity opposition movement co-leader Boris Nemtsov is calling the exclusion “the first serious victory of the opposition.” He explained further on his blog:

Boos is not on the list of candidates for Kaliningrad Oblast governor that United Russia has released.

It’s an obvious victory of the Kaliningrad opposition.

It’s the obvious result of the 12-thousand-person rally on January 30. It’s also the result of the well-coordinated actions of united opposition forces. And for some, it’s a lesson. After January 30, a row of oppositionists broke under significant pressure and clumsily began to play up to the government, depriving themselves of a political future, sacrificing their reputations. In the end they were left with nothing.

The main lesson – you must be steadfast and principled, and sooner or later you’ll win.

The opposition mustn’t be content with this.

We are under an obligation to achieve the resignation of the odious, corrupt, senile [Moscow Mayor Yury] Luzhkov. We are under an obligation to achieve elections for governor.

And, finally, we must do everything so that the ideologue and architect of the vertical of thieves, V. Putin, doesn’t even think taking back the presidency in 2012.

Demonstrations were held in about 50 cities across the country, but even the largest in the cities of Irkutsk and Vladivostok consisted of no more than 2,000 people. Organizers in Irkutsk, which included the liberal Yabloko party, the opposition Solidarity movement, and a variety of human rights organizations, had originally projected that 10,000 people would be taking part in the demonstration.

Approximately 70 people were detained in Moscow, where several hundred people turned out for a protest on Pushkin Square that had earlier been banned by city authorities. Sergei Udaltsov, leader of the Left Front political movement, was among those detained and said on Sunday that he plans to file a criminal suit against the city authorities for causing massive disorder, beating detained protesters, and using pepper spray to disperse the crowd.

Oppositionists complained that there was no reason for the city to ban their peaceful protest, which was largely focused on calling for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov to resign. One of the protesters who turned up at Pushkin Square was detained for holding a sign reading “Zhukovsky or a new Cherkizon?” referring to the controversial government shutdown of a Moscow market last summer that put tens of thousands of merchants out of work. However, when the protester showed the police his identification as State Duma Deputy Anton Belyakov, a member of the party A Just Russia, the police not only released him but put began voicing agreement that it was indeed about time for Mayor Luzhkov to go.

The most creative rally was held in Kaliningrad, where an anti-government protest of about 10,000 people had taken place in January. The stage was set for Saturday to see about 30,000 participants, when city officials relegated the protest to a sports arena instead of the open city center as organizers had wanted, on the basis that a farmers market was planned for the original location. Fearing what could happen if violence was to break out in an enclosed area, local opposition leader Konstantin Doroshok agreed to cancel the rally after holding negotiations with Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos. As part of their deal, a four hour question-and-answer session was held in Kaliningrad at the time when the rally was intended to occur, in which the governor and Doroshok took part.

Left on their own, however, a group of activists organized on the social networking website Vkontakte and rallied on the market in the early afternoon. Given that the governor had acquired the nickname “the Tangerine” among Kaliningrad oppositionists, the protesters held the fruits above their heads and called for Boos and Putin both to step down. Approximately 1000 people turned out for what has since been dubbed the “tangerine flash mob.”

Other rallies, consisting of between a few dozen to several hundred participants, were held in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Kazan, Yaroslavl, and other cities across the country.

Rally organizer and coalition co-founder Konstantin Doroshok said that a founding assembly was held on Wednesday, but leaders have yet to settle on a name for the new union.

The January 30 protest in Kaliningrad, in which between 7 and 12 thousand people participated, was notable both for its massive size and for the diversity of political forces represented. The new coalition features similar diversity, including the Kaliningrad branches of the parties Solidarity, Justice, A Just Russia, Patriots of Russia, Yabloko, and the Communist Party.

According to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta newspaper, coalition leaders invited the local branch of the Right Cause party to join the union, but leader Mikhail Tsikel declined the proposal. The ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party is also not included in the coalition.

Doroshok said that the union’s main goal is “to break the political monopoly of United Russia,” Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s ruling party, which has dominated the country’s elections at every level since its inception in 2001.

Ekho Moskvy reported that Kaliningrad residents have been threatened with losing their jobs or having their wages slashed if they take part in the coalition’s upcoming rally on March 20. Likewise, students have been promised that they will be expelled.

Meanwhile, the Kaliningrad Public Chamber was set to meet on Thursday with the Public Chamber of Russia to discuss the situation in the region, which has been a media spotlight since January’s massive rally. A relatively new institution, the Public Chamber is an oversight body intended to monitor government activities.

Protesters in the January 30 rally gathered in Kaliningrad to collectively demand that high vehicle tariffs be annulled and that Kaliningrad Governor Georgy Boos and Prime Minister Putin both resign. Boos immediately cancelled his vacation plans and promised to meet with opposition leaders, although he cancelled multiple times before finally meeting with Doroshok on February 26.

Another rally of more than a thousand Kaliningrad residents was held in the city of Yernyakhovsk on February 28, and a demonstration of comparable size to the one on January 30 is scheduled for March 20.

The governor had initially called the meeting after one of Russia’s largest protests in recent history was held in Kaliningrad on January 30. By various estimates, between 7 and 12 thousand residents came together to protest tariffs and call for the governor’s resignation.

The protest gained widespread media attention domestically and abroad, provoking Boos to cut his vacation short and the Kremlin to scapegoat Oleg Matveychev, a political adviser responsible for the region who has now resigned under pressure. The governor then scheduled a meeting with rally organizers for February 2.

However, Boos phoned opposition leaders on Wednesday evening to tell them that the meeting would have to be postponed – already for the second time in less than two weeks.

According to Konstantin Doroshok of the Solidarity opposition movement, the governor said that the meeting would have to be put off because they have not yet been able to ensure participation from all local opposition representatives. He did not specify to Doroshok when exactly the meeting would be rescheduled.

The Gazeta.ru online newspaper cited sources in the Kaliningrad government as saying that the governor wanted to see Mikhail Tsikel, the local representative of the Right Cause movement, at the meeting with opposition leaders. However, in addition to being out of town, Tsikel did not participate in the January 30 rally.

Kaliningrad Regional Duma Deputy Mikhail Chesalin of the Patriots of Russia party was also notified of the meeting postponement by the governor on Wednesday. He added that during their conversation, the governor had mentioned the Communist Party. Local Communist Party representative Igor Revin told Gazeta.ru, however, that their party has not been invited to the meeting at all, leading to speculation as to why the governor would mention it.

“You cannot promise everything to everyone all at once,” the prime minister told party leadership at a meeting on Friday. “You can’t turn into promisers who make promises only in order to pull the wool over people’s eyes, force their way into government agencies, and then just deal with their own problems.”

Putin asserted that the party needed to learn how to explain to voters what problems are faced by regional governments, and also how to prove to them that United Russia proposes the most effective solutions to these problems.

Putin’s warning comes a week after Russia’s largest anti-government rally in years, when 12 thousand protesters gathered in Kaliningrad last Saturday to demand the resignations of Kaliningrad Governor and United Russia member Georgy Boos and Prime Minister Putin. Every political party in the region besides United Russia participated in the rally.

United Russia is the largest and most powerful political party in Russia, and has held nearly a complete monopoly on government offices at every level throughout the country since its inception in 2001. It has been accused of rigging elections countless times, including the last set of regional elections in October when the representatives of three opposition (though largely Kremlin-loyal) parties walked out of the State Duma in protest of the blatantly fraudulent results.

The rally was organized by the opposition movement Solidarity, which has gained significant prominence in Russian politics since its inception little more than a year ago. Movement leaders Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Milov and Ilya Yashin traveled from Moscow to take part in the event.

With the exception of the Kremlin-backed United Russia, representatives of every political party in Kaliningrad were present at the rally: Solidarity, Yabloko, Patriots of Russia, the Communist Party, the Liberal Democratic Party, and A Just Russia, as well as various regional social organizations.

The basis for the rally was the sharp increase of state duties on vehicle registration, as well as high customs duties on imported cars and increased housing and utilities taxes. Protesters demanded the resignation of Kaliningrad Governor and United Russia member Georgy Boos, as well as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his administration.

An analogous rally was held on the same day in St. Petersburg.

This is not the first time Russian car owners have come together in a large act of protest. Last December, five thousand people took part in a similar rally in Kaliningrad, demanding the annulment of high duties and taxes. The Federation of Automobile Owners of Russia initiated a process to form an official political movement last November, which they say would work to solve “the economic problems of the middle class and small businesses,” suffering from unfair vehicle legislation.