Page 56 - BNE_magazine_bne_September 2019

56 I Eastern Europe bne September 2019
A protestor holds up a copy of the Russian constitution to a riot police officer. Article 31 guarantees the right to assembly.
MOSCOW BLOG: Kremlin ups its game with police violence at Moscow protests
Ben Aris in Berlin
The Kremlin upped its game after police used an unusual amount of violence against protestors
in Moscow and arrested over 1,300 demonstrators.
Videos on social media showed police linking arms and charging crowds most- ly brandishing nothing more dangerous than balloons. Protestors were out to call for the inclusion of opposition members in the upcoming Moscow city council elections, almost all of whom have been excluded on technicalities.
The protest on July 27 was unsanctioned by the authorities and came on the back of a 20,000-strong sanctioned rally the week before. That rally was the culmina- tion of a week of protest that grew in size as the week wore on.
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Commentators called the July 27 clash the most violent since the large-scale protests on Bolotnaya Square in 2012 that led to hundreds of arrests after protestors fought with police.
“There have been violent clashes with protesters before. The first was on May 6, 2012, closing out the 'Bolotnaya' protest wave of 2011-12, which until then had been entirely peaceful. Some of the anti-corruption protests of 2016- 17 were also met with large numbers of arrests,” tweeted Sam Greene, director of the Russia Institute at King's College London. “Force has also been used to break-up smaller scale protests, such as tent camps blocking construction
in Khimki Forest or Moscow's Park Druzhby (to name just two). I could go on. Public politics under Putin
have never been entirely vegetarian. On all occasions – including this one – police violence was unprovoked. These protests have not seen rioting, destruction of property, rock-throwing or anything else from the protesters' side, other than the occupation of public space and refusal to disperse.”
However, the more than 1,388 people arrested, reported by OVD-Info that has been monitoring police actions during protests, is the largest number of arrests in a protest to date. Russia watchers say that Putin is playing with fire.
The violence of the police response threatens to radicalise the protestors and unite the opposition in a way their own rhetoric has been unable to achieve.