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Russia’s ‘non-system opposition’ (a hardcore pro-US faction of the opposition) continues its protests demanding authorities to help opposition candidates to run in elections to the Russian capital’s parliament. All of these candidates failed to collected the required number of signatures (some opposition members even provided fake signatures) to participate in the election as candidates. The ‘non-system opposition’ calls that the inability of their candidates to meet the legal requirements is an act of political opression.
On July 27, around 3,500 opposition supporters gathered outside of City Hall of the megacity repeating the aforementioned demands. At least 700 of the ‘protestors’ were bloggers and registered journalists. They briefly clashed with police that led to detentions of around 1,074 people.
According to media reports, a notable part of the detained people was not from Moscow. At the same time, the fact that every fifth ‘opposition supporter’ was blogger or journalist was unprecedented. Such % of journalists and bloggers do not particiapte in ordinary rallies. It reveals the ugly face of the ongoing ‘opposition protests’ in Moscow that are mainly aimed at distabilizing the situation in the Russian capital and does have little with the real political situation there.
The high number of persons that have ‘strange motivation’ also plays into the hands of earlier reports that the recent wave of ‘pro-US opposition activities’ targeting Moscow were fell funded from Western ‘citadels of democracy’.
An interesting fact that despite low numbers of protesters that participate in anti-government rallies in Moscow and across the country, these protests are actively covered by various Russian and English-language maisntream media outlets. Media exaggerate the numbers of protests and their influence. Media reports showcase a 3,500-people protest in the city with the real population of around 15,000,000 as a sign of the opposition’s ‘wide support’ and ‘dominating anti-government views’ among the population.
