Opponents of the government have asked the St. Petersburg authorities to sanction a rally of 15,000 in the city’s center on March 24, an organizer said on Monday.
The activists want to march along the Kamennoostrovsky Prospekt and hold a gathering at the Field of Mars square, Andrei Pivovarov said.
Participants will include members of unregistered parties Parnas and The Other Russia, the group Solidarity, as well as Yabloko, A Just Russia and the Communist Party, Pivovarov said.
St. Petersburg City Hall did not comment on the request on Monday. It refused to authorize earlier a protest rally downtown on March 5, the ban ending in an unsanctioned rally attended by some 800, about 300 of whom were detained by police. Another rally on March 10 was also banned.
Pivovarov did not elaborate on the rally’s goals, but it will take place one day before the date for a potential runoff in the presidential elections, which were carried by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in the first round of vote on March 4 with 63.6 percent of the ballots.
The opposition has accused Putin of rigging the vote, though most alternative counts still gave him victory in the first round. Two sanctioned protest rallies took place in Moscow last week, each attracting thousands of Putin’s opponents.
