Dear Commons Community,
The Associated Press reported that more than 100,000 people gathered on Christmas Eve in Sakharov Avenue in Moscow, cheering on opposition leaders and calling for an end to Mr Putin’s 12-year rule. The Christmas Eve demonstration, bigger and better organized than a similar one two weeks ago, as well as smaller rallies across the country encouraged opposition leaders hoping to sustain a protest movement ignited by a fraud-tainted parliamentary election on Dec 4. Estimates of the number of demonstrators ranged from the police figure of 30,000 to 120,000 offered by the organisers. Demonstrators packed much of a broad avenue, which has room for nearly 100,000 people, about 2.5km from the Kremlin, as the temperature dipped well below freezing.
A stage at the end of the avenue featured banners reading “Russia will be free” and “This election is a farce”. Heavy police cordons encircled the participants, who stood within metal barriers, and a police helicopter hovered overhead.
Today Online quoted the former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who closed down the Soviet Union on Dec 25, 1991 as:
“I’m happy that I have lived to see the people waking up. This raises big hopes,” Mr Gorbachev, 80, told Ekho Moskvy radio.
He also urged Mr Putin to follow his example and give up power peacefully, saying the Prime Minister would be remembered for the positive things he did if he stepped down now.
“I would advise Vladimir Putin to leave now,” he said. “He has had three terms – two as President and one as Prime Minister. Three terms, that is enough.”
Bill Keller in an op-ed column in the New York Times commented:
“Putin seems clueless in his disdain, dismissing the protesters as tools of America…
It’s difficult to see yet a clear alternative to Putin. The contenders include a billionaire oligarch who is majority owner of the New Jersey Nets, Putin’s disenchanted former finance minister, a few old faces from 20 years ago, Communists, ultranationalists, reformers. Absent a consensus opposition leader, the odds are that Putin will prevail for another round.”
Tony
