Anti-Putin protest

Anti-Putin protesters show staying power in Russia

 

KAL PORUSH :

Vladimir Putin's opponents vowed on Sunday to press on with demonstrations against his 12-year domination of Russia after tens of thousands attended a march which kept up the momentum of their protest movement."We'll be back," the organizers said on a social network site, one day after demonstrators defied the cold to stage the third mass rally since anger mounted over alleged fraud in a parliamentary election won by Putin's party on December 4.Waving flags and banners, protesters marched within sight of the red-brick Kremlin walls and towers on Saturday, chanting "Russia without Putin!" and "Give us back the elections!"Although Putin's supporters also held a big rally in Moscow on Saturday, warning against the threat of instability, the size of the opposition march suggested Putin faces a protracted challenge as he prepares to return to the presidency in March 4.Such protests were unthinkable six months ago and were sparked by demands for fair elections, but they have grown into one of the biggest political threats to the former KGB spy since he was first elected president in 2000.Putin is all but certain to win a six-year term as head of state in March, but his authority has been damaged and a pause in protests over the long New Year holiday has not deterred people who protested in large numbers on December 10 and 24.The longer the protests continue, the bigger the threat they pose to Putin's legitimacy, even though the opposition is only loosely united and contains groups as diverse as nationalists, leftists, liberals and non-affiliated environmentalists."When I saw the thermometer was at minus 22 C (-7.6 F) in the morning, I thought no more than 10,000-15,000 people would turn up. Thank God, I was very wrong. Muscovites turned out to be more determined, stronger and persistent than I thought," opposition politician Boris Nemtsov wrote in a blog."We face a protracted hard struggle against cynical, ruthless rogues and thieves. It's a marathon which we have to win," wrote Nemtsov, a cabinet minister in the 1990s, before Putin rose to power.The next big protest is expected to be on February 26, the week before the presidential election, or soon after it, the organizers say.