Divided and Fizzling: A year after the start of street protests, Russia’s opposition is fragmented and disillusioned.
As darkness fell on December 15th, Russian police officers began carefully edging protesters off Lubyanka Square. As the protest fizzled to an end, scores of protesters and journalists scurried into cafes and bookstores to warm themselves. The last dozen or so protesters where nudged down the street towards and surrounded by the police near the entrance to Moscow’s Kita-Gorod metro station.
The latest round of Russian street protests had begun on a more promising note when the most famous opposition figures - including the anti-corruption blogger Alexander Nevalny and Sergei Udaltsov of the Left Front - were warmly greeted by the roughly 2,500 protesters. Aleksei Navalny, in particular, found himself surrounded by a gaggle of reporters and well-wishers from the moment he entered the square. After detaining these luminaries, the police began carefully clearing the rest of the square in temperatures that hovered around -15 Celsius.
In barely three hours the Lubyanka protest in front of the headquarters of the FSB, the successor to the KGB, was over.
The brief and sparsely attended protest left many participants frustrated. Ira Roldugina, a graduate student in history, has taken part in the street protests since they began last December. She explains: “Last December we were unified in our demands. We went into the streets determined to make changes and to prove we were not alone.”