Demonstration organizer Elena Prikhodina of the Solidarity opposition movement said that the event, dubbed the Day of Disbelief, was dedicated to the so-called “Ryazan training exercises” held on September 22, 1999. Skeptics of the official explanation for the chain of deadly bombings – that the culprits were Chechen militants – cite the incident in Ryazan as evidence that the Russian Federal Security Services (FSB) were behind the bombings. They specifically accuse Vladimir Putin – who spent a year as head of the FSB until his appointment as Prime Minister in August 1999 – of being directly involved.

Participants of the demonstration gathered on Moscow’s Chistoprudny Boulevard and held posters reading “We don’t believe the state version of the explosions,” “Ryazan. We don’t believe,” and “The FSB is hiding the truth. The casualties Anna Politkovskaya, Yury Shchekochikhin, Sergei Yushenkov, Alexander Litvinenko searched for this truth,” among others.

Journalist Anna Politkovskaya, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko, and Duma members Yury Shchekochikhin and Sergei Yushenkov were all assassinated (in Shchekochikhin’s case, suspected to have been assassinated) between 2003 and 2006. Each had investigated the bombings and suspected that the FSB was to blame.

Another demonstration organizer, Mikhail Kriger, noted in his speech to the crowd that the bombings played a key role in Vladimir Putin’s first presidential campaign. Blaming the attacks on Chechen militants became the official basis for beginning the Second Chechen War, which greatly boosted Putin’s popularity, thus effectively aiding in his election. That potential motive, together with a wealth of evidence of foul play on the part of the Russian authorities, points to the FSB and Putin as perpetrators of the bombings, say skeptics of the government’s response.

Putin has written off the charges as “delirious nonsense,” but requests by relatives of victims of the attacks and others for an independent investigation continue to go unanswered.

According to a report by local news agency MediaRyazan, police say that 1276 large public events have been held in Ryazan so far this year, with 748 of those being civic or political demonstrations or rallies. The civic or political events were attended by approximately 150 thousand people, with 350 thousand law enforcement officers also on the scene.

Ryazan’s anti-terrorism commission said that with the number of demonstrations on the rise each month – and unsanctioned ones in particular – the police have become unable to properly maintain law and order during official holiday events. As a result, said the commission, no more than one large event should be allowed to be held in the city per day.

MediaRyazan did not manage to obtain comment from any of the members of the commission: Governor Oleg Kovalyov left after the meeting for a business trip, Deputy Governor Andrei Sevelev was unavailable altogether, and the regional police bureau turned down requests to speak with the press.

Oppositionists were more than skeptical of the legal basis for the initiative. “It’s hard for me to imagine how you can ban holding several massive events in the city,” said Sergei Yezhov, leader of the Ryazan branch of the Other Russia opposition coalition and a co-organizer of local rallies in the Strategy 31 campaign for free assembly. “We sometimes have more police come to our rallies than participants. Let them sit at home and not participate.”

The opposition leader added that Ryazan Deputy Police Chief Sergei Sosnovsky denied that such a ban would ever actually go into effect.

Nevertheless, political analyst Vladimir Avdonin noted that Ryazan was an odd choice for such an initiative, given that it has few large protests. The only ones that regularly occur are held annually by the Communist Party on November 7 and May 1, he said.

“So it’s possible that this is a test run,” Avdonin explained. “First ban [rallies] in Ryazan, and then in other cities.”

That sentiment was shared by Lev Ponomarev, notable activist and head of the organization For Human Rights. He added that limits on civil rights can only be introduced during states of emergency, “but there’s no state of emergency in the city.” Ponomarev also noted that this was not the first time local authorities have attempted to ban rallies on the basis of too few police officers, citing Yekaterinburg as an example.

One of the organizers of the Moscow Strategy 31 rallies, Konstantin Kosyakin, agreed that the commission’s initiative has nothing to do with terrorism and was solely meant to prevent legitimate anti-government protests. “”It’s not right,” he told the Kasparov.ru news portal. “There is a federal law about rallies, in which the frequency of holding events is in no way written; to ban holding more than one rally a day is something awful.”

On Thursday, the Kasparov.ru news website reported that police in the far-eastern city of Khabarovsk have confiscated one thousand copies of the Other Russia party’s membership application.

Anton Lukin, a delegate from the party’s July 10 founding congress, was detained upon his return from Moscow to the Khabarovsk airport and sent to the notorious Center for Extremism Prevention (commonly known as Center “E”). There, officials confiscated the set of blank applications as well as several copies of the party’s program, Lukin’s flash drive, and a book of poetry.

Police refused to give Lukin the legally-required written verification that his belongings had been confiscated; he plans to file a complaint with regional prosecutors.

Other Russia party executive committee member Aleksandr Averin said that the confiscation is likely an attempt by the authorities to prevent the party from gathering the 45,000 members necessary for official federal registration. Without this registration, the party will not be able to participate any federal or local elections.

Just southeast of Moscow in the city of Ryazan, Other Russia branch leader Sergei Yezhov reported on Thursday that the city’s official website had abruptly canceled a press conference meant to discuss the party’s founding.

Yezhov said that the press office of the city website agreed on July 14 to hold a press conference on July 19. An announcement was posted on the website at about 4:00 pm on Thursday, but then it was gone an hour and a half later.

According to the opposition leader, an anonymous source in the website’s editorial office said that the press conference was canceled “not because of organizational, but political motives.”

Nikolai Matrosov, editor-in-chief of the Ryazan city website, refused to comment to Kasparov.ru in regards to the unexplained cancellation.

Russian opposition leader and writer Eduard Limonov announced the creation of a political party under the name of the Other Russia opposition coalition on June 28. At the time, Limonov said that he expected the government to attempt to interfere with the party’s attempt to gain official registration. A founding conference was held in Moscow on July 10, where delegates agreed on a party program. As agreed, the party will focus on carrying out decisive democratization of Russia, to de-bureaucratize the government, to make political turnover at the highest levels of government a possible reality, and to reinvigorate the country’s political spirit.