Moscow Deputy Mayor Aleksandr Gorbenko, who has been heavily involved in negotiations with opposition leaders over an upcoming rally on February 4, said the square would only be opening because the contract to build a parking garage there will be expiring within the next week.

“Neither the Moscow mayor’s office nor the Moscow city government held any deliberate intent to freeze construction work on Triumfalnaya Square,” he said.

The announcement came a day after approximately 30 people were arrested during a Strategy 31 protest in defense of free assembly on the boundaries of the square.

Oppositionist activists in the Strategy 31 campaign have long contended that the decision to fence off their traditional meeting space was a politically motivated attempt to drive protesters out to more secluded parts of the city. There were no signs of construction being carried out since the barrier was erected.

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.

On Thursday, St. Petersburg Other Russia party branch leader Andrei Dmitriev said that city administrators had related the news to him by telephone the day before. The city is required by law to provide an alternative location to hold rallies that it refuses to sanction in the originally requested one, but, as often happens in the case of opposition rallies, the alternative would effectively hide the protesters from public view.

“They proposed Pionerskaya Square, but no Pionerskaya Square is going to suit us,” Dmitriev retorted. “It’s going to be at Gostiny Dvor.”

The Moscow mayor’s office also refused to sanction the upcoming rally.

Left Front co-leader and Strategy 31 co-organizer Konstantin Kosyakin told Kasparov.ru that he was told by city officials that the application was denied due to ongoing construction on Triumfalnaya Square.

“There can’t possibly be any work going on there. They just lie brazenly,” said Kosyakin.

Indeed, although a construction barrier was erected around Triumfalnaya Square nearly a year ago, there is no actual construction anywhere to be found.

Moscow’s Strategy 31 organizers and participants plan to hold their protest regardless of official sanction – for the first time in two years, as a sit-in instead of a rally.

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. Solidarity rallies are also held around the world in New York, London, Rome, Tel Aviv, Toronto, and other cities.

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.

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.”

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.

With a new mayor and a rift between rally organizers, nobody knew what to expect from Moscow’s Strategy 31 rally. When the three organizers – Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, National Bolshevik leader Eduard Limonov, and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin – were told by the mayor’s office that they would be allowed to hold a rally for no more than 200 people on Triumfalnaya Square, it was both the first time ever that such permission had been granted and the first time that the trio had become so split on how to respond. Alexeyeva came to an agreement with the mayor’s office to allow a rally for 800, while Limonov and Kosyakin chose to split off and hold a separate rally – on the same square, at the same time, and still under the banner of Strategy 31 – unsanctioned and thus more liable to a police crackdown, but for as many people as wanted to come.

According to Gazeta.ru, Moscow city police were given an order ahead of the rally to avoid detaining participants and to behave in an appropriate fashion. To ensure this, Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev and the new deputy mayor in charge of work with city law enforcement, Vladimir Shukshin, were present at the rally to observe. Presidential rights advisor Mikhail Fedotov and federal Human Rights Ombudsman Vladimir Lukin also came as observers.  And it showed. Metal detectors were set up at the entrance to the sanctioned part of the rally, and police stopped traffic to allow activists arriving from the metro to cross the street. OMON riot police, who are most often noted in the media for their particularly brutal treatment of opposition protesters, were heard yelling into a microphone: “Go to Alexeyeva, she’s waiting for you.” About 1000 showed up for the sanctioned event.

Protesters who chose to join with Limonov and Kosyakin were forced to squish onto the terrace outside the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, which borders Triumfalnaya Square. At the height of the rally, the crowd was estimated at between 1500-2000 people. Police made several detentions when activists from the unsanctioned rally attempted to saw open the barrier that is currently blocking off the majority of Triumfalnaya Square for construction. Another two were detained for setting off smoke bombs.

A half hour after the rally began, police formed a human chain and began to push the unsanctioned crowd towards Alexeyeva’s event, knocking over the metal detectors in the process. According to Ekho Moskvy radio, Limonov himself was hoisted by his arms and legs over that part of the square. Once inside, ralliers were not allowed back out.

While this was going on, Lyudmila Alexeyeva and singer Katya Gordon were giving speeches to their crowd, with Gordon shaming the police for jamming Limonov’s ralliers together and Alexeyeva hailing the sanctioned event as “our shared achievement.” “I want to thank you for coming to Triumfalnaya Square on every 31st date for the course of a year and a half,” said the elderly rights activist. “We must force the government to treat our rights with respect.”

A number of notable civic organizations had representatives at Alexeyeva’s rally, including Lev Ponomarev of For Human Rights, Left Front leader Sergei Udaltsov, Solidarity members Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Davidis, and Oleg Kozlovsky, Khimki Forest defense activist Yevgeniya Chirkova, and representatives from the Memorial human rights center. Nemtsov decried the conflict between the Strategy 31 organizers, saying that “we mustn’t give the Kremlin such a gift as a schism.” He then proposed that ralliers gather once again on December 31 and end their rally by marching on the Kremlin.

After an hour, the sanctioned rally was over, and both organizers and police began asking people to leave. However, a group of between 300-800 people broke off and began marching south down the Garden Ring towards the Russian White House, blocking traffic and apparently taking Nemtsov’s words as a call to immediate action. Police broke up the crowd amidst cries of “it’s our city!” and “revolution!”

At that point, most of the marchers scattered, but about 30 reformed and continued to march on the White House. Mobile Twitter messages from those present gave some insight into the group’s mentality. “Part of the group has set off for the White House, IMHO in vain: you really need to know when to stop,” tweeted Solidarity member Oleg Kozlovsky.

According to reporter Ilya Azar, “Nobody knows where the White House is. Kozlovsky is asking people not to go and nobody is listening to him.” Eventually, OMON riot police caught up with the marchers, and half ran away. Gazeta.ru reported that seven were detained right outside of the White House entrance, including activist Marina Litvinovich, Kasparov.ru correspondent Pavel Nikulin, and Polit.ru journalist Maria Klimova.

The total 38 detainees were released on Monday morning from holding cells in Moscow, according to Other Russia representative Aleksandr Averin.

Two separate rallies in defense of free assembly were also held in St. Petersburg on Sunday. About 1000 people gathered at Gostiny Dvor, were police immediately began making detentions. Another 300 people rallied at Dvortsovaya Square. Police began detaining those activists after they unfurled a 30-meter-long Russian flag.

Other Strategy 31 events were held in the Russian cities of Vladivostok, Kurgan, Penza, Murmansk, Tver, Ekaterinburg, Samara, Astrakhan, Sochi, Ryazan, Krasnodarsk, and others, largely without incident.

For the second time in a row, about 50 protesters also held a solidarity rally outside of the Russian embassy in London. Participants included exiled oligarch Boris Berezovsky, former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, and Marina Litvinenko, the widow of murdered ex-FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko.

Video from RIA Novosti on the Moscow protest (in Russian):

The proposal was made late Monday to Strategy 31 co-organizer and prominent rights activist Lyudmila Alexeyeva. Speaking to Ekho Moskvy radio, Alexeyeva said she “was just at the mayor’s office,” where officials said they were willing to “widen the part” of Triumfalnaya Square that they had proposed last week for the oppositionists to rally. The expansion, said officials, would “block traffic,” but if no more than 800 people took part in the rally, it would not be broken up by police as in each past Strategy 31 rally. “They say that about 800 people plus the press will fit there,” said the rights activist. She did not rule out, however, that more people might try to participate.

“It’s very important that people who definitely want to be at the rally come on time, because when the space fills up, it could be difficult to get there,” noted Alexeyeva. She also expressed hope that the other two Strategy 31 organizers, Other Russia party leader Eduard Limonov and Left Front representative Konstantin Kosyakin, would agree with her to accept the proposal, so that the Russian opposition could finally hold a rally in defense of the constitutional right to free assembly without being broken up by police.

The mayor’s office originally agreed to sanction the rally only if no more than 200 people showed up, but then reneged on their offer when rally organizers insisted on letting 1500 people protest.

A source in the mayor’s office told the Interfax news agency that the city was not willing to take down a construction barrier and remove equipment currently taking up the majority of space in the square, as oppositionists requested last week that they do in order to allow the usual 1500 or so protesters to take part in the event.

After talks on Monday night, however, the three Strategy 31 organizers were unable to reach a consensus on whether or not to accept the city’s proposal. According to Ekho Moskvy, Limonov and Kosyakin now plan to write a another letter to the mayor’s office asking for 1500 people to be allowed to come out to the rally. Alexeyeva said she would not be signing the letter.

Limonov had earlier expressed both surprise at the proposal and skepticism in general. “For my part, I can also say that we were told that there was only space for 200 people; where all of a sudden, in the course of a day, did space for another 600 come from?” he said.

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.