A protest against corruption in St Petersburg, April 2017. Photo CC-by-2.0: Farhad Sadykov / Flickr. Some rights reserved.
The past two months have seen prominent and mass protests in Russia. The most high profile was the “Anti-Dimon” protest, initiated by Alexei Navalny and his Anti-Corruption Foundation. This demonstration was directed against PM Dmitry Medvedev’s alleged illegal activities. On 26 March, tens of thousands of people across Russia, from small towns as well as large regional centres, took to the streets carrying placards with anti-corruption slogans. In most places, the demonstrations went peacefully, but in Moscow there were mass detentions of protesters by the police.
At the same time as these rallies were taking place, the country’s road traffic was being disrupted by a long distance truckers’ strike. The truckers are protesting an electronic toll system introduced to compensate for damage done by heavy goods vehicles to Russia’s roads. And, finally, on 29 April came the “Fed Up” demonstration, set up initially by the Open Russia movement, although admittedly it wasn’t the demo itself that had the most impact, but the inclusion of the movement’s American and British branches in the Russian government’s list of “undesirable organisations”, as well as an illegal search of its Moscow office and seizure of equipment and literature.
