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.

According to Ekho Moskvy radio, May Day events in Moscow that had been sanctioned by the city government included five demonstrations, three processions, and eleven rallies. One of the processions was organized by the opposition movement Solidarity, which counted members from a variety of other opposition groups and public organizations among its 500 participants. Prominent figures in the procession included United Civil front leader Garry Kasparov, former Deputy Prime Minister and Solidarity cofounder Boris Nemtsov, and former police Major Aleksei Dymovsky. Participants carried posters, political insignia, and a gigantic Russian flag spanning several meters in length while chanting “Russia without Putin,” “Moscow without Luzhkov,” “Putin is Brezhnev, Putin is Stalin,” “We need the Other Russia,” and “Putin must go,” among other slogans.

Although a smoke bomb was set off at one point during the procession, the police did not move to detain anyone. Protesters believe that a provocateur set off the bomb. Despite that, the procession successfully made its way to Moscow’s riverside Bolotnaya Square, where the event ended with a cultural festival. Police detained several people on the square without explanation, including Andrei Moiseyev, co-leader of Solidarity’s Moscow branch and one of the event’s organizers. Moiseyev was escorted away by police together with a reproduction of a painting by artist Dmitri Vrubel, entitled “The Kiss of Putin and Brezhnev” that he was holding. Also detained were artist activist Pyotr Verzilov, his wife, several musicians, and event co-organizer Sergei Davidis. Police gave no explanations for any of the detentions.

Elsewhere in Moscow, at least five thousand people turned out for a demonstration held by the Communist party. In addition to the Communists themselves, members of the Left Front, the National Bolsheviks, the anti-fascist group Antifa, and anarchist organizations also joined the protest.

The liberal opposition group Yabloko also held a demonstration in Moscow, with approximately 1200 participants. Chief among speakers at the event was Yabloko leader Sergei Mitrokhin, who warned against allowing Prime Minister Putin to return to the presidency in 2012. “We need a new president who won’t rob the people of their rights and freedoms – who will fight not against the opposition, but against corruption,” he said to the crowd.

Another protest dubbed the Day of Anger was held in Moscow by the opposition group Left Front. A wide variety of oppositions, human rights advocates, environmental activists and social justice advocates came together to express their collective grief with Moscow’s ruling elite – in particular, Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Governor Boris Gromov.

Controversy had surrounded plans for the Day of Anger all last week. Left Front leader and event organizer Sergei Udaltsov had said on Wednesday that the city had sanctioned the event, but the mayor’s office denied this the next day. It remained unclear up to the end whether the rally had really been officially sanctioned or not – a vital factor, since participating in an unsanctioned rally in Russia is punishable by law, and many unsanctioned rallies end with participants being beaten and/or arrested by the police. In any case, the rally went on, but Udaltsov was detained at the end. The official reason cited by police was that more people had taken part than Udaltsov had indicated on the application for sanction. According to Left Front press secretary Anastasia Udaltsova, the unofficial version for Udaltsov’s detention, as told by several police officers, was that “representatives of the Moscow government would like to have a chat with him.”

In the city of Kaliningrad, approximately three thousand demonstrators took part in a rally of various opposition groups. According to Kasparov.ru, what began as a traditional May Day demonstration evolved into an anti-government rally. Participants brought signs to the event reading “Peace, work, May – no work, no housing,” and held up tangerines, which have become a symbol of public protest in the city in recent months. Following that, however, protesters began chants demanding for the federal government to resign.

In St. Petersburg, a procession planned by democratic opposition groups was banned by city authorities. Olga Kurnosova, executive director of the pro-democracy group United Civil Front, said that the reason involved the slogan that the protesters had planning to use, which called for St. Petersburg Governor and Putin favorite Valentina Matviyenko to resign. Supposedly, the slogan did not correspond with the slogan written on the application to hold the rally that was filed with the city. Therefore, the procession was banned altogether. Despite that, about seven hundred oppositionists held a stationary demonstration where the procession was supposed to take off from.

A photo gallery of the various events in Moscow is available here at Grani.ru.

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.

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.

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.

An estimated two thousand people attended a protest in the Siberian city of Irkutsk on Saturday, and another 1200 people attended an unrelated protest in the city of Samara on the same day. Among other demands, both groups had harsh criticism for the prime minister and called for him to immediately step down.

In Irkutsk, residents, workers, and environmental activists gathered to protest the reopening of the controversial Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill. After decades of protests, operations at the mill were finally suspended in October 2008 due to environmental concerns regarding the mill’s discharge of toxic waste into Lake Baikal, the world’s largest freshwater lake and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, a decree signed by Prime Minister Putin in mid-January allowed the mill to reopen, sparking renewed outrage from citizens and environmental activists internationally.

A coalition of ecological and civic organizations organized Saturday’s protest, and politicians from the local legislative assembly and Moscow showed up to support the effort. Leader Sergei Mitrokhin of the liberal Yabloko Party and co-leader Vladimir Milov of the Solidarity opposition movement were among those present. Activists from the banned National Bolshevik Party also attended the protest, holding a banner reading “People! Baikal! Victory!” – the acronym of which matches with the acronym of their party name in Russian.

Protesters singled out oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who has control over the mill, and Prime Minister Putin, who they accuse of covering up Deripaska’s unethical business practices, as the main targets of their enmity.

Irkutsk city officials had warned prior to the rally that security would be tight. Blaming “the current economic situation of Russia” for an increase in opposition protests, Deputy Internal Minister Mikhail Sukhodolsky promised that “no excuses will be accepted” for failures of the police to curb demonstrations.

Given that, the city dispatched a number of armored military vehicles to flank the demonstration. Photographs published online of the vehicles, one of which resembles a small tank, were decried on Tuesday by the Russian Internal Ministry as “provocational and not corresponding to reality.” In a statement to Kasparov.ru, Solidarity activist Ilya Yashin maintained that “my colleague Vladimir Milov took these photographs, and many people saw these machines.”

The increase in police forces was especially notable because of the comparatively small security presence at a January 30 rally in Kaliningrad, where 12 thousand people gathered to protest rising tariffs and to demand the resignations of the prime minister and local Governor Georgy Boos.

Demonstrators at a counter-protest in Irkutsk organized by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party praised the reopening of the mill, with between a thousand and 1500 participants holding banners with the phrases “Baikalsk Pulp and Paper Mill – our life” and “Thanks to the government for the opportunity to work in Baikalsk.” One placard directed at opponents of the mill read “Suitcase – Station – UNESCO.”

In contrast to their choices during the Kaliningrad rally, the regional branches of the token opposition groups Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR) and A Just Russia sided with the United Russia counter-demonstration. State Duma Deputy and LDPR member Andrei Lugovoy, who is wanted by a British court for suspicion in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko, travelled from Moscow to address the crowd.

The second protest, in Samara, was initially intended to be held “in defense of constitutional rights and freedoms.” In addition, however, protesters turned out to voice their disapproval of numerous governmental practices, including rising housing and utilities tariffs, crumbling infrastructure, and the failed modernization of the local AvtoVAZ automobile manufacturer. Among their concrete demands were the return of direct gubernatorial elections and the resignations of Prime Minister Putin and Samara Governor Vladimir Artyakov, who is also the former head of AvtoVAZ.

A number of civic and labor organizations took part in the rally in Samara, including the All-Russian Strike Committee, which was invited by AvtoVAZ factory workers. According to Committee coordinator Nikolai Nikolaev, several groups of auto workers from the cities of Tolyatti and Syzran were unable to attend the demonstration because police had blocked off the road.

Given the failed modernization of the auto manufacturer, Nikolayev said after the rally, “people discussed the issue of how to live from now on. The AvtoVAZ workers said that the authorities are not dealing with their problems.”

In their own way of dealing with their problems, regional police in Samara are planning to initiate criminal charges against the rally’s organizers. During the demonstration, voters rights activist Aleksandr Lashmankin called for participants to stage a repeat demonstration on March 5 – a statement that “was not covered in the application to hold the rally,” a police representative explained to the Interfax news agency.

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.

According to Zavarzin, precision-guided weaponry may be installed on Kaliningrad’s border regions with Poland.

Russia is acting tough after Warsaw signed agreements on locating an American missile defense base housing 10 interceptor rockets in Poland, some 185 kilometers from Russian soil.

Responding to a journalist’s question, Zavarzin said that there was no present need to put nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad. However, he said the proposal had been floated, and that it “does not fall under the scope of agreements and negotiations on strategic stability, which we are holding with the Americans.” The decision, he said, was ultimately left to the commander-in-chief. At present, the colonel-general said, Russia needs to modernize its surface, underwater and coastal divisions.

Mikhail Babich, Zavarzin’s deputy on the committee, told Gazeta.ru that placing a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic was a hostile act on the part of the US, and confirmed that Russia was planning a symmetrical response.

“We are developing a series of measures for a symmetrical response to the USA in the context of the deployment of ABM [ballistic missile defense] in Poland and the Czech Republic, and other hostile acts,” Babich said. “They are being developed to guarantee Russia’s safety and as a response in case of a strike on our territory.”

Meanwhile, defense experts questioned by the publication were skeptical about the need for precision-guided weapons and tactical nuclear arms in Russia’s western enclave. Russia’s army, they said, had other hardware that already guaranteed the safety of the country’s western border.

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