In Moscow, Triumfalnaya Square was cordoned off by police from early morning hours, with officers telling journalists that “some sort of event” would be held there in the evening.

As the rally began and cries of “freedom of assembly always and everywhere” and “freedom to political prisoners” could be heard among the 200-strong crowd, riot police pushed a crowd of journalists and photographers away from the square towards an underground pedestrian passage and set about detaining the activists. Among those arrested were Solidarity members Ilya Yashin and Anastasia Rybachenko, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov, and United Civil Front Moscow leader Lolita Tsariya.

According to Kasparov.ru, numerous activists were severely beaten by police while being detained. Doctors called to a police station where Rybachenko was being held advised her to have her neck examined in the station’s trauma center. Other Russia member Konstantin Tofimtsev was also reportedly beaten and placed in a cell separate from the other detainees.

Moscow city authorities had refused to sanction the protest on the basis that “archeological work” was being done on Triumfalnaya Square. While the square has been cordoned off for more than a year due to supposed construction plans for an underground parking garage, virtually no work has been done over that time.

In St. Petersburg, between 400 and 1000 Strategy 31 protesters attempted to hold an unsanctioned march along Nevsky Prospect. They were blocked by police, however, who then began detaining participants. According to local Other Russia leader Andrei Dmitriyev, many were kept in police holding overnight.

Approximately 150 protesters came out to a Strategy 31 protest in Rostov-on-Don. According to local United Civil Front and Solidarity leader Boris Baty, oppositionists were forced to go through several different courts before local authorities would sanction the event.

In Omsk, opposition organizers were prevented by local authorities from holding a regular rally, and local United Civil Front Secretary Viktor Korb explained to the gathered crowd that the group was therefore forced to hold a small public meeting instead.

Rallies were also held in the cities of Saratov, Sochi, Ryazan, Tomsk, and others.

Activists from various Russian civil and political movements have been holding Strategy 31 rallies for more than two years across the country. As a general rule, the protests are not granted sanction by local authorities and are routinely violently dispersed by riot police.

Video of the march in St. Petersburg:

Members of the Other Russia opposition party and a group of civil activists were attempting to hold the latest in a weekly protest campaign that they have dubbed “An Election Without the Opposition is a Crime.” Participants held signs lamenting the exclusion of numerous opposition groups in upcoming parliamentary elections and passed out flyers calling for people to join them in a culminating protest on December 4 – the day of elections for representatives to the State Duma.

The police presence on the square was heightened from the last protest, with a full perimeter set up around Triumfalnaya and several paddy wagons stationed to cart away demonstrators. Law enforcement officers also videotaped the protest.

Of the 26 protesters arrested, Kasparov.ru reports that at an ambulance was called for at least one – Yevgeny Popov, whose forehead was cut when he was detained and forced into a police bus.

No information was available as to whether or not the protest had been sanctioned by city authorities.

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 arrests began when the protesters unfurled posters saying “Freedom to Sergei Udaltsov,” the Left Front leader currently on hunger strike in jail, and pictures of political prisoner Taisiya Osipova. Oppositionists then linked arms and sat on the ground, crying “freedom to Taisiya Osipova” and “Russia without Putin.”

According to eyewitnesses, police acted very brutally toward the protesters. “They surrounded us in a ring and then began pulling us out one by one. They twisted our arms and dragged us along the ground,” said Polina Ivanova, an Other Russia member and one of those detained.

Others eyewitnesses reported that at least two oppositionists were severely beaten in police custody.

While arrests were being made, those present at the rally began clapping in protest. One activist from the Solidarity opposition movement was dragged out of the crowd and thrown into a police bus for his applause.

Left Front Press Secretary Anastasia Udaltsova was detained halfway to the building of the presidential administration, where she intended to hand in a list of demands of rally members.

About 200 people took part in the Day of Wrath protest, which is held monthly and meant to provide a place for Moscow residents to voice their discontent with city authorities on relevant economic, social and political issues.

Moscow city authorities had refused to sanction the August 12 protest on the grounds that there was not enough room on the nearby sidewalk for pedestrians to pass.

As an alternative, the city proposed that the protest be held on the Shevchenko Embankment, where officials have suggested moving all protests not allowed in the city center since 2007. The embankment is outside of central Moscow and would render any protests held there hardly visible to the public.

Day of Wrath organizers Sergei Udaltsov, Left Front co-leader Konstantin Kosyakin and human rights advocate Lev Ponomarev say that the refusal to sanction the rally on Teatralnaya Square was unlawful.

Unsanctioned protests in Russia are routinely cracked down upon, often in a brutal fashion, by police.

Additionally, two of the three protest organizers – Udaltsov and Kosyakin – are currently under administrative arrest following an unsanctioned Strategy 31 protest on August 31. Udaltsov was given a 15 day sentence; Kosyakin was given 5 days. They were charged with disobeying police orders.

On June 22, a small group of protesters stood outside the Moscow mayor’s office holding posters reading “We had a beekeeper for a mayor and now we have a tile layer,” “put a stop to the tile aggression” and “Sobyanin! Enough digging around in the budget money!”

“There are serious grounds to suspect an element of corruption,” said Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, present at the protest. “Stones are being laid at a rapid pace, the quality is low, the stones are swelling up, some parts are collapsing.” He called for the work to be temporarily halted until an experiment could be carried out on the tiles.

Police initially tried to detain the protesters, but chose not to in the end.

At the end of this past February, Moscow Vice Mayor Pyotr Biryukov announced plans to tear up 4 million cubic meters of sidewalk pavement and replace it with stone tiles in 2011.

The Russian press explains the mayor’s interest in the project as connected with the fact that his wife, Irina Rubinchik, owns a stone tile business. Whether or not the stones being laid in Moscow were purchased from her company is unclear. But according to Novaya Gazeta, the entire center of Tyumen was laid with stone tiling while Sobyanin was governor of Tyumen Oblast between 2001 and 2005.

“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.

As Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reports:

Moscow city authorities today officially approved a planned rally by a group of human rights and opposition activists in support of freedom of assembly, RFE/RL’s Russian Service reports.

Authorities gave the green light to the March 31 rally — organized by activists including Moscow Helsinki Group Chairwomen Lyudmila Alekseyeva — days after banning a similar protest planned for the same day.

Alekseyeva said today that her group’s rally will be held on Moscow’s Pushkin Square, not on Triumph Square, as it was in the past. Alekseyeva said city officials refused to permit the activists to march through the streets after the demonstration.

Eduard Limonov, a leader of the Other Russia opposition group, applied last week to the mayor’s office for permission to hold a large-scale Strategy 31 gathering on March 31 on Triumph Square. But city authorities rejected that application on March 18.

Limonov said that he and his supporters will gather on Triumph Square despite the ban and march from there to Red Square.

Limonov launched the Strategy 31 campaign in 2009. The movement holds protests on the last day of months with 31 days to commemorate Article 31 of the Russian Constitution that guarantees freedom of assembly.

Other opposition groups and rights activists later joined the campaign.

Limonov and Alekseyeva split in October after Alekseyeva agreed to the Moscow authorities’ request to limit the number of demonstrators at the protests to 1,000. Limonov accused her of collaborating with government officials.

Authorities in St. Petersburg have refused permission for a March 31 rally there.

Moscow Helsinki Group leader Lyudmila Alexeyeva and a group of other human rights advocates told Interfax they had decided to change the format of the rally. “We’re changing the place that we’re going to hold the rally. We think that there will be more participants at a rally on Pushkin Square,” Alexeyeva said.

The longtime rights advocate said one of the reasons for changing the location was the construction barrier erected around Triumfalnaya Square that the city authorities are refusing to take down.

“In addition, we don’t want for there to be any confrontation,” she said, likely referring to the unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies that have been lead on the same square for the past several months by Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov.

Limonov says he still plans to hold his own version of the rally on Triumfalnaya Square on March 31, despite the break between organizers and regardless of whether the government sanctions it or not.

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 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.

Negotiations mediated in part by Memorial rights center head Oleg Orlov between the two groups earlier this month came to nought, Orlov told Interfax on Tuesday. “The negotiations are over. We regret that both sides turned out to be unprepared to find a rational compromise in the name of shared interests,” he said. “There’s too much disagreement and too much distrust.”

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.

Update 02/01/11: Details added regarding a raid on the Strategy 31 organizational committee office.

Rallies under the Strategy 31 campaign were held in 70 Russian cities on Monday, continuing the Russian opposition’s call for the government to obey the right to free assembly as guaranteed under the 31st article of the Russian constitution. Some of the rallies were sanctioned by the government and others were not, but none of this seemed to make an impression on police who assaulted and arrested dozens of demonstrators and accidental bystanders – without regard, necessarily, to the legal status of the event they were attending.

In Moscow, per recent tradition, two rallies were held simultaneously on Triumfalnaya Square. A sanctioned one was coordinated by longtime human rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva, who until recently organized the rallies together with Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov. Limonov, who is routinely arrested for holding unsanctioned Strategy 31 rallies, was the organizer of Monday’s unsanctioned event. Both had applied for permits with the Moscow mayor’s office, but only Alexeyeva’s was granted, with a cap on the number of participants set at 1000 people – lower than her request of 1500. Limonov reported earlier that his application requested a cap of 2500 ralliers.

The city government planned ahead to prevent any possible unsanctioned activities on the square. By 1:00 pm Moscow time, the entrance to Triumfalnaya Square from Tverskaya Ulitsa was surrounded by two dozen Ural trucks (normally used for transporting soldiers), with another three police buses parked on the square itself. Metal detectors were set up to separate ralliers attending the sanctioned or unsanctioned events.

As usual, estimates of the number of rally participants varied. Interfax claims 700, Gazeta.ru – 1500, Lev Ponomarev – 2500, and the Moscow city police claim there were 500 ralliers and 100 journalists present at the square.

The rally kicked off at 6:00 pm with a speech by human rights leader Lev Ponomarev, followed by Lyudmila Alexeyeva and Solidarity co-leader Boris Nemtsov. Provocators attempted to unfurl a banner during Nemtsov’s address but were prevented by the ralliers. Among cries of “Russia without Putin” and “down with the government of thieves,” satirist Viktor Shenderovich and leading environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova gave their own speeches. Chirikova called on participants not to be afraid and to bring their friends to the next Strategy 31 rally on March 31. She closed her presentation with a cry of “freedom to political prisoners,” which the square took up as a whole. Politician Vladimir Ryzhkov and Solidarity member Ilya Yashin also spoke and the rally concluded with a general call: “Vova, get out!”

As had been planned, Limonov’s followers in the Other Russia party set off on a march towards the Kremlin after the sanctioned rally was over. According to a Kasparov.ru correspondent, between 30 and 40 people marched along the sidewalk of Tverskaya Ulitsa chanting “Russia without Putin” and, when passing the mayor’s office, “Sobyanin, resign” and “give us mayoral elections.” Upon reaching the Kremlin, the protesters dispersed into the metro. Police videotaped the event but made no arrests.

The first reports of detentions and other unlawful police behavior at the rally, however, came in early in the evening. One Gazeta.ru correspondent witnessed OMON riot police dragging several young people headed towards the sanctioned rally into a bus. Through the glass, one could see police kicking the protesters and beating them with truncheon.

Among the detainees was Solidarity activist Anastasia Rybachenko, who was recently detained in Minsk in an opposition demonstration following presidential elections in Belarus. She confirmed by telephone that Moscow police were beating detainees in the buses, and she herself had an injured hand and was bleeding. The other detained activists hailed from Solidarity and Oborona, she said.

According to Kasparov.ru, Eduard Limonov was detained directly upon arriving at Triumfalnaya Square. Earlier, Other Russia party member Aleksandr Averin reported that police had raided the offices of the Strategy 31 organizational committee. The apartments of two Other Russia party members were also raided the same day. The raids, said Averin, was carried out in connection a criminal suit had been filed for “issuing calls to participate in massive disorders” in connection with the December 11 ultranationalist riots on Manezhnaya Square. Since Limonov was detained outside his home on his way to the last Strategy 31 rally, he invited the press to his apartment on Monday evening so that there would be evidence if this happened again.

Left Front coordinator Sergei Udaltsov was detained on the metro at 5:30 pm, apparently on his way to the rally, under suspicion of having used a counterfeit ticket. He was released an hour later.

Pyotr Shkumatov, an activist with the Blue Bucket Society, was also among those detained. He reported that accidental bystanders had also been arrested.

All in all, a total of 54 people were detained at the Moscow rally, by Kasparov.ru’s estimate. Moscow city police put the number at 20.

The day before the rally, Svoboda News spoke with Vladimir Ryzhkov about his participation in Strategy 31:

“I’m taking part in the rally organized by Lyudmila Alexeyeva, Lev Ponomarev and other human rights advocates. But I am absolutely outraged that Eduard Limonov time and again is refused sanction for peaceful, nonviolent actions. This is a blatant and rude violation of the constitution and of Russian legislation. In this case, the government is trampling on human rights. It is absolutely outrageous and unacceptable.

The action on January 31 has special meaning. It is being held soon after Boris Nemtsov, Eduard Limonov and other unlawfully detained and prosecuted figures were released from jail. We are obligated to express our outrage and dissent with the actions of the authorities.”

According to the Associated Press, Boris Nemtsov compared Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who is being called on to resign by a relentless surge of protesters.

“Please, someone tell me how our leadership differs from his,” Nemtsov shouted to the ralliers. “Russia has to get rid of Putin.”

However, National Public Radio erroneously reported that Monday’s Strategy 31 protests were sparked by the unrest in Egypt.

There were far more arrests at a much smaller Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg. At Gostiny Dvor, police detained 100 of the 500 protesters taking part in an unsanctioned rally organized by the local branch of the Other Russia party. Activist Ravil Bashirov began the event by enumerating a series of basic freedoms and calling on the government to observe them. Among these, he said, were the freedoms of speech, assembly, and the right to hold elections. He was detained immediately after his speech.

Witnesses said police were brutal when detaining ralliers. “The OMON were definitely brutal this time around,” said one Other Russia party member. “They rounded people up, dragged them into paddy wagons, beat some of them. And at the end they began detaining passersby and members of the media.”

Despite a heavy police presence, no one was detained at a second unsanctioned Strategy 31 rally in St. Petersburg, this one organized by Solidarity and the United Civil Front. About 100 people came out to the rally, which was held on Dvorotsovaya Square.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held across Russia in the cities of Omsk, Kurgan, Kirov, Sochi, Yekaterinburg, Perm, Blagoveshchensk, Voronezh, Sergiyev Posad, Murmansk, Kemerovo, and others. Several of them reported unlawful detentions.

Click here for photographs of the rally in Moscow.
More photographs of the Moscow rally.
Click here for photographs of the march to the Kremlin.