Last Friday, Charukhin admitted in court that he had falsified a police report that was used as evidence to convict Yashin to five days in jail following a December 31 rally in Moscow. Then, according to Kasparov.ru, Moscow City Police Spokesman Viktor Biryukov announced on Tuesday that Charukhin was being fired for making contradictory statements in court that raised doubt among his colleagues, and for avoiding his superiors. In response, Yashin’s opposition movement, Solidarity, offered Charukhin legal counsel to defend his labor rights. That same day, Anton Tsvetkov, a member of the Public Council on the Moscow City Police and representative of the foundation Officers of Russia, said it was possible that Yashin could have been paid off to change his testimony. It was unclear who he meant would have done the paying off. He did, however, accuse oppositionists in general of only holding unsanctioned rallies only to create photo opportunities.

Now, Kasparov.ru is reporting that Charukhin has changed his testimony yet again. On Wednesday, a video clip of Charukhin being interviewed by an unknown woman was posted on the website of Moscow’s police headquarters at Petrovka 38. The interviewer poses a series of (mostly leading) questions in which the officer claims he only recanted in the first place because of pressure from Yashin and his lawyer.

In the video, Charukhin says he was very worried prior to Friday’s court session. Once in court, he says, Yashin began to ask him whether or not he believed in God, showed him quotes from the Bible “not to bear false witness,” and showed him the part of the Russian Criminal Code that punishes false testimony. Charukhin says Yashin and his lawyer both asked him questions, none of which he understood and saw as “sneaky tricks.” In result, he became distressed, ceased to understand the essence of the questions, and, as the interviewer puts it, began to say “whatever came into my head.”

Charukhin says he “did not say what I was thinking” in court.

After court, the officer went on, he began getting phone calls from the BBC and Citi-FM radio asking him to read a statement they had written for him on the air. This statement would claim he actually didn’t work at all on December 31, was not on Triumfalnaya Square that night and did not participate in Yashin’s detention at all. Charukhin says he refused the requests.

In addition to the video, the Petrovka 38 website also posted a scan of a new report signed by Charukhin, in which he states the same claims as in the video. Anticipating the obvious, the police added a statement saying that Charukhin filed this new report, which is dated February 8, 2011, before it was announced that he was being fired – thus removing the possibility that the new statement was written under pressure.

To make things even more complicated, Moscow Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev told Ekho Moskvy on February 9 that Charukhin hadn’t been fired at all: “I didn’t fire him.” Kolokoltsev said he was looking further into the matter.

Regardless of Charukhin’s testimony, it remains apparent that the charge that Yashin was convicted of – pushing police officers away from fellow oppositionist Boris Nemtsov – was impossible, given video evidence reviewed in court on Friday indicating that Yashin was arrested before Nemtsov was.

The trial resumes on February 10. On his blog, Yashin says he has proof of Charukhin’s claim that a superior officer had dictated his falsified police report. He intends to present this proof in court.

As each of the other Strategy 31 rallies that have been held since the series’ inception one year ago, Saturday’s event was unsanctioned by the Moscow city authorities – thus technically punishable by Russian federal law. As with past events, the mayor’s office denied sanction to rally organizers on the basis that another event was already planned for Triumfalnaya Square, where Strategy 31 is traditionally held. In the past, these events have included sports festivals, “Winter Festivities,” and rallies promoting blood drives by the pro-Kremlin youth movement Young Russia. This time, it was a three-day car show.

As oppositionists gathered on Triumfalnaya Square, the sound of skidding tires and roaring motors drowned out all other noise – at the very time of the rally, an improvised race track had been set up to hold a drifting competition. According to Gazeta.ru, no more than 50 people were watching the competition.

Given that Triumfalnaya Square is not large enough to hold a drifting competition, the neighboring roadway leading from Moscow’s Garden Ring to Tverskaya Ulitsa was blocked off to give the cars more room. Previously, oppositionists have been criticized by the authorities and their opponents specifically for blocking traffic.

In any case, as a result of the barriers, space to walk between Triumfalnaya Square and the bordering Tchaikovsky Concert Hall was so tight that police officers themselves had no space to move around. Therefore, notes Gazeta.ru, it was harder for them to detain rally participants.

Strategy-31 co-organizer Eduard Limonov, who has been arrested numerous times and spent 10 days in confinement for organizing an unsanctioned Strategy 31 rally, managed to avoid detention specifically because of the lack of space for the police to move. Surrounded by a ring of six personal guards, the National Bolshevik leader was able to stay at the rally for a full hour before quietly taking leave.

Other areas of the square were not as peaceful. Boris Nemtsov was among the approximately 100 detained (by official Moscow city police numbers, 35), and has reportedly been charged with insubordination towards a police officer. Opposition leader Sergei Udaltsov was detained after handcuffing himself to a metal gate. According to Kasparov.ru, police initially tried to detain Udaltsov by physically tearing him away from the gate: “They nearly broke my arm,” he said. After several minutes, police brought metal cutters to sever the handcuffs. Other activists, including some with the opposition art movement Voina, also handcuffed themselves to the gate and were similarly violently torn away by the police.

Overall, rally participants and media correspondents noted that the police acted typically violently. Detained activists, blogging over their cell phones in police buses, reported that even young girls were being violently beaten by the police. One Kasparov.ru correspondent witnessed a police colonel punching a female photographer in the back three times over. Upon detention, police reportedly tore off activists’ clothing if the number “31” was written on it.

As Gazeta.ru reports, the police charged with dealing with the squished mass of activists between Triumfalnaya Square and the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall at one point formed a human chain (made up largely of more full-bodied officers) and began squeezing the rally participants towards a nearby metro entrance. The force of this chain was so great that some police reportedly let out some of the female activists who were screaming in pain.

However, instead of pushing the crowd into the metro, the police ended up pushing the crowd toward the neighboring Theater of Satire. In result, the glass facade of the theater shattered, injuring a soldier and several other people. According to Moscow City Police spokesman Viktor Biryukov, the soldier was injured only after a female opposition activists pushed him. “In result, the soldier fell to the ground and was wounded in the face by the glass,” he said.

The last of the Strategy 31 participants dispersed around 8:30 pm. Many of them went to rally outside of the various police stations where detained activists were being held. At about this time, State Duma Deputy and Young Russia leader Maksim Mishchenko showed up in a black dress jacket and began to give a fiery speech about the “evil empire” that he believes the United States to be.