Police in Russia’s Siberian city of Irkutsk have held an exercise to disperse an unsanctioned rally, the Russian Interior Ministry said in a statement on its website on Monday morning that it later withdrew, Lenta.ru reported.
With less than two weeks before the opposition’s planned February 4 rally in Moscow for fair presidential election, news of the exercise in Irkutsk created a media stir. The statement later disappeared from the ministry’s website.
The exercise saw a group of people simulate a rally near a railway station in the city.
“Police arrived at the scene and drove the protesters away from the railway. Those who organized the disorder were detained,” the ministry’s statement said.
A police source told Lenta.ru that the decision to release the statement was the result of “political shortsightedness.”
As the date of the planned rally nears in Moscow, Russian Live Journal users have called for large-scale flash mobs on February 2, urging activists to gather near metro stations, pedestrian underpasses and other public transport places during the evening rush hour.
The aim of the flash mob is to raise awareness of the February 4 rally and to “put an end to information blockade and censorship on television.”
“This must be the most massive flash mob ever held in Moscow. There must be a lot of us and we must be noticeable,” activists say in their blogs.
Some 35 percent of Russians spoke in favor of the fair-elections protests and 11 percent say they are ready to take parts in the rallies, according to a survey conducted by the Russian all-Public Opinion enter (VTsIOM). Twenty-four percent opposed the protests and the rest had no opinion.
