For a month now, a nascent protest movement has roiled Russia as Prime Minister Vladimir Putin seeks to reassert himself as president, the same position he gave up in 2008. His successor and likely soon-to-be predecessor President Dmitri Medvedev responded to the protest movement by offering reforms on his way out the door after a planned March election. But today’s protests stand as a strong rebuke to the eleventh hour concessions.
Security sources told the U.K’s Guardian that 80,000 people showed up to protest in Moscow — the largest demonstration since the collapse of the Soviet Union — to demonstrate against what they contend was a fraudulent parliamentary election. Here’s a photograph of the crowds in Moscow on Saturday:
In the first days of the protests, U.S. Secretary of State HIllary Clinton said the elections were a “fraud,” drawing criticism from Putin.
Thousands also demonstrated in St. Petersburg, one of Russia’s largest cities and a financial and cultural capital. The U.K. telegraph paper carried a video report from the protest.
