Thousands participated in rallies both in support and against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Saturday around Russia and outside Moscow.
In St. Petersburg, 5,000 rallied against Putin, according to official police estimates; the organizers put the figure at 20,000. Local news web site Fontanka.ru reported the downtown Konyushennaya Square was filled to capacity and could not accommodate all participants. Police have consistently downplayed the size of anti-Putin rallies, which organizers claim were attended by a much higher number than the official figures.
Police estimates show that about 2,000 attended a protest event in Yekaterinburg in the Urals, some 3,000 in Samara in central Russia, and between 1,000 and 1,500 in the Siberian city of Tomsk. Elsewhere in western Siberia, some 3,000 came to an opposition rally in Omsk, compared to 8,000 at a pro-Putin event.
The biggest pro-government rally outside Moscow took place in Voronezh in central Russia, gathering almost 14,000, city police said. Local news web site Communa.ru put the figure at 8,000 to 10,000. In Ufa, some 5,500 attended a combined rally and concert in Putin’s support, police said. Police and the opposition have generally had greatly differing estimates of the number of people who attended pro-Putin rallies.
Police said the total number of people who attended the various rallies throughout Russia was about 230,000 people.
Protest rallies also took place outside the country: some 100 protested against Putin’s policies and his expected return to the Kremlin in March by the Centre Georges Pompidou in central Paris. To withstand a winter chill of minus 3 degrees Celsius, a samovar with hot tea was brought in by organizers.
Some 10 supporters of the protests picketed the Russian embassy in the Latvian capital Riga.
