Anti-Putin protesters stage second demonstration
About 1,000 anti-Kremlin protesters rallied in Russia's second largest city today, a day after a similar demonstration in Moscow brought clashes with police and at least 170 arrests.
Both protests were part of a series of "Dissenters' Marches" called by the Other Russia umbrella group which brings together an array of opposition factions including one led by former world chess champion Garry Kasparov.
The protests focus on complaints that Russia under President Vladimir Putin is slowly strangling democracy.
Kasparov was among those arrested in Moscow and was released late last night after being fined 1,000 roubles (€28.64) for disrupting public order. He did not go to St Petersburg for today's rally.
Cordons of police lined the square on the edge of central St Petersburg where the rally was held, but widespread detentions like those in Moscow were not observed. One woman was seen being hustled into a police vehicle. Witnesses said she had been distributing leaflets.
The local head of Kasparov's United Civil Front, Olga Kurnosova, was detained en route to the rally, according to Maxim Reznik, a representative of the liberal Yabloko party.
Yesterday, Ms Kurnosova told The Associated Press that she expected the tough police action in Moscow to provoke a large turnout in St Petersburg. But the crowd appeared to be less than organisers had hoped for, filling only about half of the area marked off by metal barricades for the rally.
City authorities gave permission for the rally at the square outside the Young Spectators Theatre, but banned plans for a march after the rally that would go down the city's main avenue and then on to the city government headquarters.
It was not immediately clear if protesters would try to march. A similar action late last month ended with police clubbing demonstrators.
Yesterday, the Moscow protesters had tried a different tactic, by first gathering at landmark Pushkin Square, with the aim of marching toward another square about two kilometres (1.2 miles) away where authorities said they could hold a demonstration.
But police clamped down on Pushkin Square, detaining demonstrators including Kasparov, and later scuffling with a few hundred who managed to march to the authorised square.
"It is no longer a country... where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law," Kasparov said after being released, appearing unfazed by the detention.
"We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe," two dictatorships that have cracked down on opposition, he said.
Mr Putin, whose second and last term ends in 2008, has created an obedient parliament, and the government has reasserted control over major television networks, giving little air time to its critics.
