The second protest came even bigger with around 3,500 flooded the street (Image via: The New York Times)

Hundreds Arrested During Second Major Protest in Moscow

Kirana Chandra Mumpuni Budiana
Politics & Economic
Politics
Jul 28, 2019
2493
Russia’s political oppositions have been protesting in Moskow about election officials’ decision to prevent independent candidates from running. The first major protest of the year happened last week. After that, the opposition leader Alexei Navalny called on second major protest to be happened on July 27, 2019. The urge made him arrested. It turned out the second protest became a bigger protest. Before the protest, there were also several opposition members detained, including Ilya Yashin, Dmitry Gudkov, Lyubov Sobol and Ivan Zhdanov. However, the second protest was still going on without them. Yashin, Sobol, and Zhdanov were released on the second major protest day, just to be detained again.

As it planned before, the second major protest took place on July 27. They were protesting outside the Moscow City Hall at 2 p.m. local time. There were 3,500 protesters according to Moscow police. Although the activists said the number was higher. During the protest, the police arrested more than 200 people and it turned into riot. In the evening, the protesters were dispersed by the police into many separated groups. They were chanting “Russia will be free” and “Russia without Putin” around the City Hall. After the protest, the OVD-Info police monitoring group reported that the number of arrest rose to 1,007. It is listing cases of violent arrests.

At the same day, Police also came to Navalny’s headquarters, where his allies were streaming live footage of the protest. The police also stormed the studios of the independent television channel, Dozhd. The editor-in-chief of Dozhd was questioned, as the part of criminal investigation of the protests. The resistance from Russian opposition happened for a reason. The 45 seats in Moscow city council will be responsible for very large municipal budget. Those seats are up for election on September 8. The problem is the council dominated by the pro-Kremlin United Russia party.

Source: https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2019/07/27/russian-police-detain-over-1000-protesters-moscow-opposition-rally-a66599

Protest , Moscow , Russia , election , Putin , politic , opposition