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Russia: Protesters under pressure
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.