While there was no talk of a permanent residency visa for Luzhkov, a source told ITAR-TASS, the entry visa was granted on the basis of “reunifying their family.” Shortly after he was fired, Luzhkov sent his teenage daughters to London to study. His wife, billionaire real estate mogul Yelena Baturina, is also currently in London.

According to Kasparov.ru, Baturina’s status as a major investor with significant financial interests in the British economy allow her to hold a special British business visa. Thanks to this visa, she can obtain a residential permit and then make a claim for British citizenship.

The news comes two weeks after Luzhkov failed in an attempt to obtain citizenship in Latvia. He applied shortly before New Year’s, having deposited 200 thousand Lats (about 400 thousand USD) into a Latvian bank account; he reportedly already owned real estate in Jurmala. However, Riga declared the disgraced mayor persona non grata and put him on a blacklist of foreigners.

Media reports later surfaced that Luzhkov was trying to obtain citizenship in Austria.

The ex-mayor himself says that he has no plans to leave Russia “if the motherland itself doesn’t disown me.” According to a source close to the mayor, Luzhkov simply does not want to rely on Russian passport services and decided to obtain one from a country in the Schengen Area.

If he does decide to flee to Britain, Yury Luzhkov would not be the first Russian public figure in trouble with the Kremlin to do so. Oligarch Boris Berezovsky took asylum in London in 2001 after Russian authorities began investigating his business activities. Britain has turned down all three extradition requests to send Berezovsky back to Russia, where he was convicted in absentia of embezzlement and theft in several different criminal suits.

Yury Luzhkov was fired by Russian President Dmitri Medvedev on September 28, 2010, as a result of “a loss of confidence.” His decision was preceded by a massive propaganda campaign, in which federal television aired multiple scandalous stories criticizing the mayor and his wife. Medvedev later specified that he fired Luzhkov because of the high level of corruption in Moscow.

At the same time, many members of the Russian opposition have expressed disappointment that the city has chosen to continue Luzhkov’s tradition of banning anti-government protests. On September 30, the mayor’s office turned down an application from opposition organizers to hold another Day of Anger rally on October 12. The rally went ahead today regardless, and, as happens in nearly every opposition demonstration that the Moscow authorities choose to ban, police violently cracked down on the protesters, detaining more than 30 according to a source in city law enforcement.

But along with decisions handed down by the authorities, another development on Tuesday brought some good news for the Russian opposition: Eksmo, one of the country’s two largest publishing houses, has released a printed version of “Luzhkov. Results,” a report written by Solidarity co-leaders Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Milov that scathingly criticizes the former mayor. While the document was the basis of a libel suit by Luzhkov against Nemtsov less than a year ago, it’s now being published in an edition of 20,000 hardback copies at 105 rubles (about $3.50) apiece. Ozon.ru will even ship copies abroad, for those able to navigate the Russian-only website.

Nemtsov explained how the publishing deal was reached:

“Immediately after Luzhkov’s dismissal, V. Milov and I were approached by the Eksmo publishing house with an unexpected proposal – to commercially publish ‘Luzhkov. Results.’ I explained to the guys from the publishing house that we’ve handed out 400 thousand ‘Luzhkov. Results’ at metro stations in Moscow over the past year.

However, this didn’t frighten the publishing house, and we negotiated a contract. And even made provisions for a symbolic honorarium.”

The book will include the entire text of the original report, plus updated information about events surrounding the mayor’s dismissal.

A description of the book by Eksmo reads: “A book by Boris Nemtsov – the first and, as of yet, the only independent investigation of the activities of Luzhkov for the 17 years of his rule.”

In the same spirit of ‘Luzhkov. Results,’ Nemtsov and Milov released ‘Putin. 10 Years. Results’ this past June. One million copies of the report (excluding samizdat copies) have been published, and the authors have been traveling throughout Russia since its release to distribute them.

“I asked if Eksmo would publish ‘Putin. Results,’ which we’re distributing all over the country for free,” Nemtsov said, following the news about the Luzhkov book. “They’re not yet ready for that.”

The appointment was made on the order of university President Gavriil Popov, Moscow’s first mayor and Luzhkov’s predecessor. “The Department of Major City Management didn’t used to have a dean, only someone fulfilling those duties.” said International University Press Secretary Yulia Mikhailova. “Therefore, when Yury Luzhkov turned out not to have a job, we gladly invited this unique specialist to work for us.” The ex-mayor is taking a symbolic salary of one ruble per month for the newly-formed position.

Luzhkov, who has continued to arrive every morning at the Moscow mayor’s office in order to collect his belongings, gave a short interview to Life News outside of International University on October 5. “I still haven’t seen any students,” he said, “but I’ve already congratulated the teachers on having a new department dean.”

“We have several departments,” Luzhkov elaborated. “The Department of Major City Management is a serious thing. There is no such specialty practically anywhere in the universities of our country. It’s important not only for Moscow, but for any major city. There need to be specialists who would understand what a major city is, would know its particularities: it’s economy, it’s society, it’s public and cultural life; who would be able to deal with its engineering systems – with everything that constitutes any city, not necessarily a major one.”

Luzhkov, who ran Moscow for 18 years before being fired after apparently attempting to stoke conflict between Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, has been widely accused of abusing his authority to give lucrative construction contracts to his billionaire wife, Yelena Baturina. He is also commonly lambasted for Moscow’s famously bad traffic and his destruction of many of the city’s treasured historical landmarks.

International University in Moscow was founded in 1991 by Popov and United States President George H. W. Bush as Russia’s first private university. It was originally intended to serve as a joint educational institution between the two countries, but today only a few dozen of the school’s approximately 3000 students hail from foreign countries, mostly the United States.

A source in the Moscow mayor’s office told Gazeta.ru that the department he is now heading was “Luzhkov’s brainchild,” financed through his personal efforts.

“Of course, it wasn’t money from the budget, but Yury Mikahilovich acted as a manager, got sponsors to sign up,” said the source, who added that it was possible that other civil servants currently losing their jobs from the mayor’s office in the whirlwind of Luzhkov’s firing would be able to find work at the university.

Lev Ponomarev, head of the organization For Human Rights, told Ekho Moskvy radio that a request had been sent to Interim Mayor Vladimir Resin to sanction the “Day of Anger,” part of a regular series of rallies under that name. The demonstrations are aimed at allowing Russian citizens to voice their collective grievances against corrupt government officials, civil rights abuses, unconstitutional policies, and other political and societal problems. The rallies are routinely banned and violently broken up by police.

While it is completely routine for the Russian authorities to ban opposition protests on weak or nonexistent pretexts, former Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov was known for going to the extreme and banning rallies just so he didn’t have to see them. As Ponomarev told Ekho Moskvy, it would not be right for Resin “to continue the tradition that was formed under Yury Luzhkov, in which any rally on Tverskaya Square across from his office was automatically banned.”

“There were many violations of the rights of Muscovites, illegal actions, corruption” under Luzhkov, the rights advocate went on. “One of these violations was the regular prohibition of large demonstrations outside his window. There must be changes. Resin, in temporarily fulfilling the mayor’s duties, should act according to the law.”

Organizers of the upcoming Day of Anger, scheduled for October 12 on Moscow’s Tverskaya Square, handed in an application for the event the day Luzhkov was fired. On September 30, they received notification that their application had been denied, on the basis that the rally would “bother Muscovites and guests of the city” and could possibly result in damage to a monument on the square. Oppositionists decried the move as unfounded, saying that the city was giving up the chance to improve the political climate in the capital.

Corresponding Day of Anger rallies are planned for October 12 in cities throughout Russia, including in St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don, Penza, Kirov, Voronezh, Ufa, Krasnoyarsk, Ivanovo, and many other cities. The last Day of Anger in Moscow was held without official sanction on September 12. Thirty out of the approximately 200 participants were detained by police.

He did, however, announce his resignation from United Russia – the country’s leading political party, head by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. In a written statement, the now ex-mayor said that he had been “subjected to a fierce attack by the state mass media” and “savage harassment,” which “were connected with the task of eliminating the mayor of Moscow from the political arena.” He then blamed United Russia for “not giving a member of the party any kind of support; [the party] did not demonstrate any desire to deal with and put a stop to the stream of lies and slander.”

Then, on late Tuesday, an entirely unexpected document was published by the opposition-leaning newspaper the New Times: a scathing letter from Luzhkov to President Medvedev, accusing the latter of “informational terror” and intentional slander, among other things. The harassment, he says, stemmed from two of Luzhkov’s letters concerning the Khimki Forest controversy that were published earlier this month. But the letters, in which Luzhkov backtracked on his original decision to stand with Medvedev in opposition to the forest’s destruction, were “not a reason, but an excuse” to get rid of him, Luzhkov asserts. “The task has been set: Get rid of him. The excuse is found. Act!” says the letter.

The Kremlin had already made about as much clear through a whisper campaign of anonymous tipsters to the Moscow press over the past month, as well as a propaganda campaign run through the state-run media. Denouncing Luzhkov’s Khimki letters as an attempt to drive a wedge between the president and the prime minister, one Kremlin source noted that “it’s obvious that such attempts will not go without corresponding reactions.”

According to Luzhkov’s latest letter, the president’s administration had already told the mayor on September 17 about the decision to fire him due to loss of confidence. Apparently, Luzhkov was asked to resign voluntarily the next day, but when it was clear that wasn’t going to happen, he was given an extra week to think it over. When Luzhkov returned to his office on Monday morning and announced that he wasn’t going anywhere, he already knew what was going to happen the next day.

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty has translated the text of the letter in full. Newtimes.ru, which hosts the original, has been suffering from bandwidth overload since the letter went online.

Prime Minister Putin said he agrees with Medvedev’s decision, and, as he is wont to do, stressed that it was made in strict accordance with the law. “It’s perfectly obvious that the relationship between the mayor of Moscow and the president didn’t work out, and anyway, the mayor is a subordinate of the president, not the other way around,” Putin said.

Several opposition activists were detained outside the mayor’s office on Tuesday evening, including one Other Russia member who attempted to unfurl a banner reading “Luzhkov, as you leave, break the fence.” The fence in question referred to the recently-erected barrier blocking off Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square, where oppositionists gather on the 31st of each month to hold rallies in defense of free assembly as part of the Strategy 31 campaign. About 50 demonstrators were present outside the mayor’s office in total, including members of Solidarity, Yabloko, and the United Civil Front.

Here is a sampling of reactions from Russian analysts and oppositionists on Medvedev’s monumental decision:

Boris Nemtsov, Solidarity Co-Leader and Former Deputy Prime Minister

This morning, D. Medvedev, for the first time, performed a truly presidential deed. He fired Luzhkov as a result of a loss of confidence.

This is the first case where Dmitri Anatolevich has clearly acted independently.

The conflict between Medvedev and Luzhkov was advantageous for Putin, but the removal of a corrupt civil servant is extremely undesirable, as his system of power breaks down.

It’s the first time that there’s been a dismissal due to loss of confidence without having criminal suits filed or obvious city cataclysms.

If criminal suits for corruption don’t show up after this dismissal, then the dismissal is going to look unconvincing, and Luzhkov has a clear political future…

In short, in the run-up to 2011-2012, Luzhkov will offer up more than a few surprises.

So whether or not Dmitri Anatolevich likes it, criminal suits are going to have to be filed.

Otherwise we’re going to have yet another unexpected candidate for president.

Stanislav Belkovsky, Political Analyst

What should have happened has happened. Luzhkov is done with, although Yury Mikhailovich himself firmly believed that he was going to survive the latest try after seven previous unsuccessful attempts to remove him. For me, as a Muscovite voter, who the new mayor is going to be is totally unimportant. For me, it’s obvious that Luzhkov’s dismissal is not a political project, but an economic one. There are no politics here, because Luzhkov didn’t block Kremlin policy. He didn’t interfere in the process of determining a nominee for president in the 2012 elections, and a year and a half later would have supported any, or the only, candidate named by the Kremlin. The political character [of the dismissal] is very contrived.

The fact is that the federal financial-industrial groups decided to take Moscow for themselves, because they have long considered it unjust that these gigantic economic resources are being managed by a person from the past, who is organically disconnected from the contemporary federal elite. However, Vladimir Putin, who governed under the unofficial slogan “don’t make a splash,” that is to say don’t violate such hard-won socio-political stability – he was afraid to fire Luzhkov. And Dmitri Medvedev, as the famous Chinese proverb says it – “a newly born calf doesn’t fear a tiger,” the president, who doesn’t remember how it is when there’s instability, when there’s chaos, who is used to stability, came to this radical decision…

It’s possible that the new mayor, in the first months of his rule, will take a few relatively popular steps in order to win Muscovites’ trust… But the new mayor is not going to be interested in dismantling Luzhkov’s system. His task is to get control of this system and even strengthen it. Therefore, corruption in the city will remain and even grow.

Eduard Limonov, Other Russia Party Leader and Strategy 31 Co-Organizer

So they’ve gotten rid of the mayor!

Look out the window into the streets; can you see tanks? Luzhkov’s division hasn’t appeared?

I don’t think it’s going to appear…

I’ll see very soon whether or not the attitude of the Moscow courts toward the conflict on Triumfalnaya is going to change. On September 30, the Tverskoy Court is going to decide (for the second time) the fate of our suit (Alexeyeva, Kosyakin, Limonov) against the Moscow government concerning the rally on December 31, 2009.

On October 5, Justice Zaytsev will decide my personal fate as an organizer of the rally on August 31 of this year.

On October 6, the Moscow City Court will decide the fate of our suit (Alexeyeva, Kosyakin, Limonov) against the Moscow government regarding the July 31 rally.

So we’ll see.

Anton Orekh, Journalist, Ekho Moskvy Radio

This is what I want them to understand.

Moscow is a separate state. They say this about Moscow often, striving to underline how it gets fat at the expense of the rest of the country…

And few would find it simpler to govern Moscow than to govern the rest of Russia. And if the comrades from Leningrad think that this isn’t so, then they’re mistaken. And if they think that their friends from some kind of cooperative or their messmates from their school department can deal with the management of a separate country, they they’re also mistaken.

We shouldn’t be naive.

You’re not going to create freedom or democracy in Moscow by itself. There can’t be an honest capital in a larcenous country. If there’s no justice here, there won’t be any in Whitestone.

Whatever kind of mayor we get, he’s going to have to govern Moscow by the same rules that work in the entire rest of the territory of Russia, albeit Moscow and Russia are different countries.

“In the concluding days of this past week, a variety of media outlets, including all the federal television channels, actively dispersed negative information about the activities of the mayor and government of Moscow. Moreover, the television and radio stories and newspaper articles were notable for their lack of evidence,” said a press release from the mayor’s office.

As political scientist Georgy Bovt pointed out in a column for Gazeta.ru, many of the main ideas in the media reports came from “Luzhkov. Results,” an opposition report published a year ago by former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov and former Deputy Minister of Energy Vladimir Milov. At the time, the mayor and his wife both sued for defamation, but a Moscow court ruled that only one sentence in the 37-page report had to be reworded.

Nemtsov himself said on Monday that the weekend’s reports constitute “a cinematization of our report. Which is nice.” He added that while the television channels clearly appropriated his and Milov’s writing, “information about Luzhkov’s corrupt activities is far more important than referencing its original source.”

Russian President Dmitri Medvedev also chimed in about Luzhkov on Friday. As the Moscow Times writes:

Luzhkov sparred openly with the Kremlin last week when he backed a highway through the Khimki forest outside Moscow and criticized Medvedev’s decision to suspend construction work following environmentalists’ protests.

Medvedev retorted Friday at a conference in Yaroslavl that he disagreed with Luzhkov’s position and that “officials should either participate in building institutions or join the opposition.”

But the fact that Medvedev is taking such a roundabout way of targeting the Moscow mayor is a sign of political weakness, critics say.

“Medvedev is not behaving like a president,” said Nemtsov. “Instead of issuing an order to fire Luzhkov and investigate his activities within the frame of the president’s declared war against corruption, he’s throwing sand in a sandbox like an offended child.

“Medvedev’s moment of truth has come – either he fires Luzhkov and becomes president, or he’ll be the laughing stock of all of Russia,” says Nemtsov.

Here’s the initial 20-minute report by NTV – which, according to the newspaper Kommersant, was ordered, filmed, and edited in less than 24 hours. The opening narration, interspersed for ironic effect with Luzhkov talking about his honeybee collection, says:

Why does Moscow have the most expensive roads, and why are they constantly under repair? Why was Moscow choked by smoke, but its mayor rescued his bees? How the mayor’s wife become the richest woman in Russia, and how his deputy got a watch that costs more than a million dollars. How the tastiest corners of our capital are divided up, and how those “friends” make a living. Why Moscow civil servants live in such houses, and how bees became more expensive than people. What does it mean to “cover up for one another,” and what is the capital government keeping quiet about?

On top of everything, the newspaper Vedomosti cited a source “close to the Kremlin” on Monday as saying that the issue of Luzhkov’s possible resignation will be resolved by the end of this week.

For more on the scandal:

Medvedev and Putin at odds over Moscow mayor – The Telegraph
NTV and Medvedev Target Luzhkov – The Moscow Times

The Tverskoy Court handed down the ruling on September 7, convicting the 69-year-old leader of the organization For Human Rights of insubordination to a police officer. The accusations stemmed from Ponomarev’s participation as a co-organizer of an unsanctioned opposition protest dubbed the Day of Wrath, part of a series of demonstrations in which about 300 protesters gathered in Moscow on August 12 to demand the resignation of the Russian federal government and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov. According to police figures, 35 people were detained at the event.

Ponomarev decided to face the court on Tuesday without a lawyer. He denounced the ruling as politically motivated.

As a result of his sentence, Ponomarev told Interfax, he was unable to attend a meeting in Moscow on Wednesday between Russian rights leaders and United States presidential advisor Michael McFaul.

William Burns, the United States under secretary of state for political affairs who attended the meeting, was critical of the ruling. “I should note that it is regrettable that Lev Ponomarev, who was supposed to be at the meeting, was not able to attend,” he said in remarks to the Interfax news agency. “The freedom of assembly is very important to the United States and very important for any democratic society.”

The Russian bureau of the international human rights organization Amnesty International expressed concern at Tuesday’s ruling. “Lev Ponomarev, who was just recently named a prisoner of conscience by Amnesty International, has now received yet another punishment,” said bureau chief Sergei Nikitin.

Speaking to Ekho Moskvy radio, Memorial civil rights society chairman Oleg Orlov said that Ponomarev’s sentence was part of a disturbing pattern of crackdowns on human rights activists in Russia. “These kinds of sentences are becoming typical. They are repressive actions,” he said.

According to Moscow Helsinki Group head Lyudmila Alexeyeva, the Russian authorities are altogether scared of people coming out and protesting in the streets. This, she explained, is what explains “Ponomarev’s ridiculous punishment.”

The two other Day of Wrath organizers were also convicted of insubordination to an officer back on August 14. Konstantin Kosyakin was sentenced to three days of administrative arrest, and Sergei Udaltsov to four. Ponomarev’s court date was postponed after he fell ill in during holding in a police station and, fearing a hypertensive crisis, was hospitalized.

Ryabinin had originally been accused of abuse of authority back in March, having allegedly forced real estate businesspeople contracted with the city government to give his daughter a free 200-plus square meter apartment in the center of the capital. However, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov spoke out in his deputy’s defense, and a week later the case was dropped.

The new bribery charges were revealed yesterday when Chairman Alexander Bastrykin of the Investigative Committee of the Prosecutor General’s Office was quoted in Rossiyskaya Gazeta regarding the real estate scandal.

“It’s difficult for me to assess the reasons and motives for the decision taken by the Moscow Prosecutor’s Office to annul the decree to file a criminal case against Ryabinin,” said Bastrykin.

He then added that, as a result of additional investigating, a criminal suit had been filed against Ryabinin for taking bribes. Given Ryabinin’s status as a government official, the charge carries a sentence of between 5 and 10 years in prison.

However, Bastrykin went on, “at this time the suspect has already managed to successfully flee the territory of the country.”

The Moscow mayor’s office issued a denial that the deputy mayor had left Russia entirely, saying that he was simply on vacation. But on Tuesday, a source in the city administration told Gazeta.ru that Ryabinin was definitely abroad.

“There’s a terrible panic in the mayor’s office now,” said the source. “Measures are being taken to return Ryabinin to Russia. As far as I know, Bastrykin was given the go-ahead from the top to make an open statement: Ryabinin is a person who is close to Luzhkov.”

Russia has long suffered from widespread corruption and bribery in particular. A 2009 survey by Transparency International ranked Russia at 146 on the global Corruption Perceptions Index, noting that 29 percent of Russians had given a bribe at least once in the past year. The most recent comprehensive study on the topic, conducted in 2005, estimated that ordinary Russians exchanged more than $3 billion in bribes annually – a figure that doesn’t include the $316 billion paid by businesses and entrepreneurs.

In an article published Thursday in the Kommersant newspaper, an anonymous source in the presidential administration said that the routine crackdowns in Moscow of the opposition’s Strategy 31 rallies in defense of freedom of assembly have nothing to do with President Dmitri Medvedev or any of his officials.

The statements were a response to the intentions of Aleksei Venediktov, a member of the Public Council on the Moscow City Police and Editor-in-Chief of Ekho Moskvy radio, to appeal to a presidential deputy “to put an end to the slaughter” that happens routinely at the hands of the police during the rallies.

According to Kommersant’s anonymous source, Venediktov is barking up the wrong tree.

“The degree of activity of the police is determined by the administrators of the Moscow police and the city of Moscow,” said the source. “To see the Kremlin’s hand in the crackdown of demonstrations and to see this as a manifestation of any kind of personal ambitions would be to drastically oversimplify the situation.”

Therefore, Venediktov’s appeals to the presidential administration are unlikely to garner any results, he explained.

The statements come as tensions between the Kremlin and Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, whose tenure has now stretched into its eighteenth year, have reached a height that analysts say may finally mark his demise.

In the past several months, the mayor has been lambasted by criticism from not only oppositionists, but the Kremlin, the leading United Russian party, and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Most recently, the timing of his end-of-summer vacation – which he took in the midst of a heat wave and forest fires that wreaked havoc on the capital – and revelations about government money spent on his private beehives have made him an easier target than usual.

The Moscow mayor’s office is officially responsible for handling applications to hold rallies, protests, and other such events in the city. Luzhkov has routinely defended the decisions to deny sanction to Strategy 31 organizers on the basis of ensuring public safety, but has been caught in serious inconsistencies on multiple occasions.

Tuesday’s rally marked the eleventh iteration of the opposition’s Strategy 31 campaign. About 2000 people came out to Moscow’s Triumfalnaya Square to take part in the event, making it the largest rally in the campaign’s history.

As with the previous ten rallies, Moscow city authorities turned down an application by Strategy 31 organizers to obtain legal sanction to hold the event. Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov defended this permission-based system in a session of the city government earlier in the day, saying that the city’s decision to allow or disallow any given rally is not due to any “particular love” for certain rally organizers, but to considerations for public safety.

“Before every event in the capital, we take all necessary organizational measures to assure total safety for the people,” said the mayor, noting that anyone who wishes to hold a demonstration can file an application with the city and receive a decision within ten days.

The system will remain as it is, he went on, “and in the future we will continue to carry out this work in accordance with the law.”

“We will now allow chaos in Moscow,” Luzhkov stressed.

Luzhkov’s statements appear to contradict the Russian federal law that governs rallies, marches and demonstrations, which requires only a notification – not an application for permission – to be filed with the city in order to hold such an event.

Tuesday’s rally was scheduled to begin at 6:00 pm, and by that time Triumfalnaya Square had already been completely cordoned off by OMON riot police and internal military forces. According to a Kasparov.ru correspondent, the police left no free space for ralliers to gather. About 50 police buses bordered the perimeter of the square, and police blocked all pedestrians from entering. Part of the sidewalk between the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall and Triumfalnaya Square, where Strategy 31 ralliers have previously gathered when the square itself was blocked off, was also cordoned off.

Strategy 31 organizers issued a statement of concern on Tuesday morning regarding an interview with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that had been published the day before. In the interview, the prime minister charged that the real goal of Strategy 31 participants “is to get bludgeoned upside the head,” and that ralliers routinely provoke police into acting violently. In their response, rally organizers rejected the accusation and stated that any “possible incidents” of violence at the rally would be Putin’s personal responsibility.

At the same time, Moscow City Police Chief Vladimir Kolokoltsev did promise to train his officers to detain activists using less painful methods. There was no apparent option to simply not detain any ralliers at all – Deputy Police Chief Vyacheslav Kozlov said that the unsanctioned rally would be duly broken up.

A three-person delegation from the European Parliament, headed by Human Rights Committee Chairwoman Heidi Hautala, was present at the rally at the invitation of Strategy 31 organizers. Deputy Chief Kozlov said ahead of time that the delegates would not be excluded from possible detention.

According to a count by Kasparov.ru correspondents, approximately 2000 ralliers gathered on Triumfalnaya Square despite the heavy police presence and the fact that the square itself is almost entirely barricaded off for construction. Nevertheless, participants managed to rally for nearly two and a half hours, chanting opposition slogans that called for Putin to step down and for the 31st article of the Russian constitution, which guarantees free assembly, to be observed.

Moscow city police and Federal Security Service (FSB) agents reportedly created a jam in the crowd while attempting to push the ralliers away from the square, but did not manage to break up the protest.

Kasparov.ru estimates that approximately 100 people were detained during the course of the rally, including leading opposition activists Boris Nemtsov, Ilya Yashin, Sergei Udaltsov, and Roman Dobrokhotov. Two of the three Strategy 31 organizers, Eduard Limonov and Konstantin Kosyakin, were also detained. The third organizer, Moscow Helsinki Group head and former Soviet dissident Lyudmila Alexeyeva, was present at the rally but was not detained.

Official figures from the Moscow City Police cite 70 detainees, and put the number of people present at the rally at 400 people, including 300 journalists.

Eyewitnesses noted that police did not refrain from acting violently while detaining rally participants. Several activists were seen with bloody faces after having been beaten by law enforcement agents. The first participant to be detained was an activist holding a poster picturing Russia’s symbolic two-headed eagle – one head being that of Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and the other of Vladimir Putin.

As of 10:00 pm, several of the most high-profile detainees had been released, including Nemtsov and Limonov. Nemtsov was told that he had supposedly blocked pedestrian movement during the rally and had been detained on that basis. They and several other activists were charged with “violating the established procedure for arranging or conducting a meeting, rally, demonstration, procession, or picket,” an administrative violation punishable by a small fine. As of Tuesday night, approximately 80 detainees remained in various Moscow police stations.

Strategy 31 rallies were also held on Tuesday in various cities throughout Russia, with several solidarity events also taking place in Europe. Approximately 80 out of 700 ralliers were detained in an event in St. Petersburg, and rallies were held with varying levels of success or suppression in Omsk, Yaroslav, Sochi, Voronezh, Makhachkala, and numerous other Russian cities. One event in London included the participation of refugee Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky and the widow of murdered ex-FSB agent Alexander Litvinenko, Marina Litvinenko.