MOSCOW — Over a thousand Russians including prominent
members of the Communist Party packed Saturday a central square in Moscow to
protest what Kremlin critics call mass electoral fraud as police detained a
number of activists.
اضافة اعلان
Opponents of President Vladimir Putin have accused the
authorities of fraud after results showed the deeply unpopular ruling United
Russia party winning a sweeping majority in parliament at legislative polls
this month.
The three-day
vote took place following a historic crackdown
on the opposition, with authorities imprisoning Putin's most vocal critic
Alexei Navalny and formally outlawing his organizations.
With nearly all vocal Kremlin critics barred from running,
many Russians in Moscow and elsewhere backed the communists as a form of
protest voting, some for the first time.
More than a thousand protesters packed Pushkin Square on
Saturday as Communist figures decried what they called a stolen election, an
AFP correspondent said.
The crowd chanted "Putin is a thief!" and called
for the release of political prisoners.
Some protesters carried signs demanding a recount, others
expressed support for Navalny.
Ahead of the protest, authorities detained a number of
activists including Sergei Udaltsov, head of a radical socialist group, Left
Front, said OVD-Info, which tracks detentions at opposition rallies.
Authorities beefed up the police presence on the square but
members of law enforcement did not break up the rally. Instead they played loud
music in an effort to drown out the speakers.
"United Russia has stolen lawmaker mandates,"
Valery Rashkin, first secretary of the Communist Party in Moscow, told
protesters.
He and other communists took particular issue with
electronic voting results in Moscow which reversed Communist Party candidates'
leads during the September 17-19 vote.
"There's been colossal vote fraud in Moscow,"
Rashkin said, adding the party would contest the election results.
Communist lawmaker Alexei Kurinny praised Muscovites for
being at the forefront of a fight for fair elections.
"Whoever steals votes is a criminal," he told the
rally.
Veteran communist leader Gennady Zyuganov, who along with
other party leaders was set to meet with Putin, did not attend the rally.
Despite claims of mass fraud, United Russia's share of the
vote went down to 49.8 percent from 54.2 percent in the last parliamentary
election in 2016, while the communists saw their support grow to 18.9 percent
from 13.3 percent.
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