Timeline
Dec 4: Parliamentary elections marred by massive fraud take place.
Dec 4: Sergey Udaltsov, an activist in the “Left Front” opposition group is abducted. Unidentified men stop him on the street, stuff him in a car, and drive off. The next day it turns out he is under arrest. Udaltsov declares a dry hunger strike. Udaltsov was detained more than 100 times and spent a a total of a few months under arrest, so the new one does not draw a lot of attention.
Dec 5: A permitted rally against rigged elections draws a crowd of 5,000-10,000. It becomes the largest political protest in Moscow since 1993.
Dec 5: After the rally, a few hundred people march towards the Central Election Commission on B. Cherkassky sidestreet. They are met by rows of riot police. A number of people not participating in the march are caught in the resulting crush, including the reporter Tatyana Malkina. The police make arrests indiscriminately, plucking people from the crowd. The 250 detained that night include Aleksey Kamensky, a reporter for Forbes.ru, along with other journalists, as well as activists Aleksey Navalny and Ilya Yashin.
Dec 5th: About 100 people spend the night near the police station on Ilyinka St. where Navalny, Yashin, and other detainees are kept. They demand for lawyers to be given access to the prisoners.
Dec 6th: A prohibited rally against election fraud takes place on Triumphal Sq. The protesters demand the release of those detained the previous night. The government brings in a crowd of young activists with drums. About 300 rally attendees are arrested. Moreover, the police made three attempts to arrest Ilya Ponomarev, an opposition MP, in violation of his legislative immunity. A similar rally is held in Novosibirsk, where the police arrests most of the dozen people who attended.
Dec 6th: Tanya Sazansky, a photographer, uses Facebook to organize a group of volunteers to provide those detained with food and blankets, which are not available in holding cells. The group, now named iHelp, functions to this day.
Dec 6th: Ilya Klishin, a blogger, makes a Facebook event named ‘Saturday on Revolution Square’. Klishin is not affiliated with the organizers of the upcoming rally, he simply heard that it was permitted by the government. More than 5,000 confirm by the following morning. More than 30,000 confirm by Fri, Dec 8th.
Dec 6th: Arsen Revazov, a writer and advertiser, proposes making a white ribbon a symbol of the emerging movement. The idea spread widely overnight, even though it turns out that this was originally proposed by an association named “White Ribbon.”
Dec 7th: About half of the 160 judges assigned to hear the cases of the detainees suddenly call in sick. Many are assigned a different court date and released. Yashin, Navalny, and a few dozen others are sentenced to 15 days in jail.
Dec 7th: Construction starts on Revolution Square. This reduces the amount of space available for the rally. Many fear violence: the permit was only issued for a 300-person rally.
Dec 9th: The official organizers of the Revolution Square rally, including politicians Boris Nemtsov and Vladimir Ryzhkov, as well as Sergey Parkhomenko, a journalist, agree to move the rally to Bolotnaya Square. Permission is now granted for 30,000 to attend.
Dec 9th: Official results of the parliamentary elections are announced. The ruling party loses a number of seats, but retains a slim majority.
Dec 10th: The police estimates 30,000 attended the rally that day, whereas aerial pictures suggest that about 100,000 turned out. This is the largest political rally in Moscow since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. Protests take place in 99 cities across Russia, and in more than forty other countries. There are arrests in St. Petersburg, Syrtyvkar, Khabarovsk, Tyumen, Belgorod, and many other cities – but not in Moscow. About 600 are detained across the country. Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s press secretary says that the government has no comment about the protests.
Dec 12th: The organizers of the previous rally submit an application for another one on Dec 24th.
Dec 12th: A petition drive is started to annul the election results.
Dec 14th: A permit is granted for the rally on Dec 24th. It will take place on Sakharov Avenue.
Dec 15th: Putin hosts an annual televised Q&A, where he addresses the protests for the first time. He said, among other things, that he first mistook the white ribbons for condoms, and that those behind the rally paid the participants, and called them cattle.
Dec 18th: Sergey Udaltsov, still under arrest and on a dry hunger strike, is hospitalized in critical condition.
Submitted by the Press Committee of the Russian Protests. For more information please email info@interoccupy.org.
