Vladimir Putin is ultimately responsible for last weekend’s oppression of political demonstrations, writes Oksana Chelysheva

There are two Russias nowadays. One is of Putin, with his images on every other bill board, trying hard to crush, scare and harass the other, democratic Russia.

Late Sunday evening I spoke by phone with Ella Poliakova, the chair of Soldiers’ Mothers’ Committee of Saint Petersburg. She had spent almost eleven hours in a police station. She was not detained during last weekend’s violently crushed march of dissent. Ella followed her friend Natalia Evdokimova, the chair of the Human Rights Council of Saint Petersburg, onto a police bus. She told me: “I heard an OMON [the militia of the internal affairs ministry] colonel ordering, “Detain that woman in the red overcoat”. He pointed at Natalia. I immediately rushed to her when she was being taken to the OMON bus.” A few hours later she was charged with resisting the police and participating in an unsanctioned rally.

In Saint Petersburg the march had been crushed even before it started. The OMON detained leading opposition activists, Olga Kurnosova, Nikita Belykh, Maksim Reznik, Leonid Gozman, Ella Poliakova, at the Yabloko party office where a press conference had been held.

Marina Litvinovich, Garry Kasparov’s adviser, called on people coming to the march to keep quiet and walk quietly along the embankment. She was detained but soon escaped from the OMON bus, persuading her guard that she was a tourist on the way to the Hermitage. One Finnish tourist was less fortunate. On the way back from the Hermitage, he found himself detained in the same bus with Nikita Belykh, the deputy leader of the opposition Union of Right Forces.

Many people were beaten with police batons. The dispersal of the March of Dissenters in Saint Petersburg was violent. However, I have heard some apologists for Putin say that it was still not a disaster: people were not killed. No one has been taken into custody.

However, the day before, on 24 November, another protest rally was broken up. It happened in the Ingush town of Nazran. People protested against the unstoppable conveyor of violence that is developing in this republic. The last straw that broke their patience was the murder of a 6-year-old boy by the riot police who stormed the wrong house. To justify the clash, they put a submachine gun on the body of a boy and took pictures of this “rebel”.

The riot police acted on orders from the Ingush president, opening fire at the crowd that was resisting them by throwing eggs and apples. Many people were wounded and around ones hundred detained, according to www.Ingushetia.ru. The webpage was hacked into the same day. The Ingush TV linked the rally in Nazran with the Other Russia and claimed that the protesters received one million rubles from Moscow to hold it. The Ingush prosecutor Yury Turygin was again lying in his comments on the rally. He claimed that there were some 30 participants and only seven people were detained.

Is it unlikely that the methods applied against peaceful protest in one region of the state, which is under total control of its president, won’t be applied in others?

On 24 November, marches, rallies and pickets in support of the Other Russia were held in Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Orenburg, Kazan, Astrakhan, Pskov and many other cities. They were also obstructed.

In Nizhny Novgorod the steering committee of the march also failed to reach an agreement with the authorities. The administration of Nizhny Novgorod refused to authorise holding a rally in Gorky Square under the pretext that the square “is not meant for holding public actions”. All the denials were signed by Tatiana Bespalova, the deputy governor of Nizhny Novgorod Region.

In Moscow, after the sanctioned Other Russia rally finished, almost all the people who made speeches were detained, including Garry Kasparov and the human rights activist Lev Ponomaryov.

The same night, Kasparov was sentenced to five days in custody, even though the witnesses from among OMON servicemen gave conflicting testimonies.

There have been a series of detentions all over Russia, including putting people under enforced psychiatric treatment. It happened in Joshkar Ola the day before the march was held there. Artyom Basyrov was stopped in the street and taken to hospital .He was immediately put under enforced treatment.

One of the Other Russia activists in the Moscow region, Yury Chervochkin, was brutally beaten up the day before the march. His situation is grave as he suffered a serious head injury. He is still in coma. A few hours before the assault, he called Kasparov’s office to report that he was being followed by several people from the department to combat organised crime.

Nikolay Andrushenko, a journalist at the local newspaper, Novy Peterburg, was taken into pre-trial detention on 23 November for two months for his article “Why I am joining the march of dissent”.

Who is responsible for this unlawfulness? The OMON chiefs? Sure. The administration of regions and cities that violate all democratic norms? Certainly … The FSB? Of course.

However, first and foremost, the person most responsible is the man at the peak of this pyramid of the Russian vertical of power: Vladimir Putin.