Word: protesters
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...opposition, this presents a great opportunity. Opposition leaders flew down from Moscow to have their turn at the podium during the late-January protest. Alongside local activists, they called not only for lower taxes, more jobs and a new governor but for an end to Putin's reign. Nemtsov was the most prominent figure to speak. A popular governor of Nizhny Novgorod in the 1990s and a Deputy Prime Minister under President Boris Yeltsin, he took the stage in a bomber jacket and jeans. "Moscow is sucking the money from the regions as if they were its colonies," he said...
...pivotal point came on Jan. 30, when an opposition rally in the western city of Kaliningrad attracted 10,000 people, an incredibly high turnout for Russia's docile political culture and likely the biggest protest in at least five years...
...right. Demonstrations have cropped up around the country in the past few weeks. They have been smaller than the one in Kaliningrad but still very large by Russian standards. In the Siberian city of Irkutsk, a protest on Feb. 13 attracted about 2,000 people. In late 2008, just as the Russian economy was plunging, there was a protest of a few thousand people in Vladivostok and subsequent rallies that brought out a few hundred people. But the latest rallies are larger, the reasons behind them more diverse and the calls for Putin's resignation more fervent. The Prime Minister...
...hurdles are many. Putin loyalists control Russia's political institutions as well as the entire bureaucracy. The government controls all the major TV channels. The Kaliningrad protest got virtually no coverage in the mainstream Russian press. Putin has also been able to deflect part of the resentment by dressing down his political party, United Russia, and sending out envoys to show that the Kremlin is paying attention...
...favors a stronger central government. Allawi's coalition is billing itself as a more secular alternative to the current government, and draws more support from Sunni groups, who are going to play a more significant role in this election than in 2005, when they boycotted the political process in protest of the American occupation. (See pictures of the U.S. troops in Iraq...