Thousands of people marched through central Moscow on Saturday under the slogan "Russia without orphans," at an event sponsored by a pro-Kremlin group calling for the government to make it easier for Russians to adopt.
Across town, a few thousand opposition supporters, many of them waving the red flags of leftist groups, came out for a simultaneous march under the slogan "for the social rights of Muscovites."
The marches, held under cloudy skies and snow flurries, were the first major political street events in almost two months. Turnout was many times smaller than at the last major demonstration in Moscow, an opposition event in January at which tens of thousands of people marched along the Boulevard Ring in opposition to a ban on U.S. adoptions.
That ban served as one of the rallying points for Saturday's pro-Kremlin march, which was organized by a movement called "Russian Mothers" and enjoyed the support of outspoken children's ombudsman Pavel Astakhov.
The event was called the March in Defense of Children and was billed as a response to the death in January of 3-year-old Max Shatto, a Russian orphan who was adopted by a Texas family last year.
A diverse crowd of pensioners, middle-class workers, and students took part in the march, with a heavy contingent from outside Moscow, including a group of elderly people bussed in from Khimki.
Police said around 12,000 people took part in the march from Gogolevsky Bulvar to Pushkin Square, while the chief organizer, Russian Mothers head Irina Berset, estimated the crowd at 20,000 people.
Protesters approached by a Moscow Times reporter expressed not so much specific demands or concerns as much as a general sense that all was not well with Russia's children.
"I don't have any demands. I just want to express my opinion, so that people start paying attention to children's issues," said Uliana Makarova, 29, an account manager at Mastercard.
Some, but not all, said they supported the government's decision to ban U.S. adoptions.
Vyacheslav Yartsev, 32, an electrical engineer, went one step further, saying all international adoptions should be outlawed. "I want Russian children to stay in Russia," he said.
Participants denied they had been paid to attend—media reports this week said people were being offered a few hundred rubles each to show up—although some had clearly been compelled to take part. Most of the elderly and haggard-looking marchers approached by a reporter refused to comment.
Speakers at the rally that concluded the event included Vyacheslav Bocharyov, a decorated Federal Security Service colonel, who urged lawmakers to ban international adoptions entirely. Bocharyov participated in a bloody operation to free children and teachers held hostage by Islamist separatists at a school in the town of Beslan in 2004.
Organizer Berset also spoke, saying she didn't believe U.S. officials' announcement Friday that Max Shatto, the toddler at the center of a U.S.-Russia adoptions scandal, had died of an accidental blunt trauma to the abdomen.
On Friday, the Ector County Sheriff's office in the U.S. state of Texas said that according to autopsy results, Shatto died of an accidental trauma and that reports of bruising to Shatto's body were "consistent with self injury" linked to a diagnosed behavioral disorder.
The Russian Investigative Committee said Saturday afternoon that it had requested from the U.S. side all materials from the investigation into the death of Shatto, whom Russian authorities call by his Russian name, Maxim Kuzmin.
The opposition event, called the "Social March," drew a much smaller crowd than the largest anti-Kremlin protests held since December 2011, when the opposition saw a surge in support after disputed parliamentary elections won by the ruling United Russia party.
Whereas at past anti-Kremlin rallies, opposition leaders have addressed the crowd on stadium-style stages, and rock stars such as Yury Shevchuk have performed with speaker arrays, the stage at Saturday's event was about 5 meters long, attached to the back of a truck.
Authorities said that around 1,000 people took part in the march from Strastnoi Bulvar to Prospekt Akademika Sakharova, while organizers estimated at least twice that number.
The march was organized by the Left Front movement, although liberal political parties, civic organizations and other activist groups also supported the event.
At least one nationalist, prominent St. Petersburg activist Nikolai Bondarik, came to the march as well. "I don't share leftist ideas, but I support the demands of the rally, as all normal people do," he said.
The main slogan of the event was "Moscow under the control of citizens" and its demands were expressed in leftist slogans such as "for free medicine and education" and "cut prices for housing and public utilities."
Many of the participants were pensioners demanding an increase in pension payments, which are currently around 10,000 rubles a month for most Muscovites. The average salary in Moscow as of December was around 45,000 rubles a month.
People in the crowd complained that the march had a poor turnout and that more participants could have been gathered, but liberal State Duma Deputy Ilya Ponomaryov said there were more people than at past leftist rallies.
"Which means we're on the right track," he said.
He also said the rally's demands fully corresponded to the positions of his party, A Just Russia, which earlier this year demanded that Ponomaryov leave a leadership post at Left Front or quit the party.
Many participants held posters that said their apartment buildings had been handed over to commercial enterprises and that they had been unlawfully evicted from their apartments.
"I don't think this particular march will solve the problem, but it shows people that there are thousands of people with a similar problem, and they can join their forces and fight against crooked officials together," said Zinaida Ivanitskaya, a representative for pensioners who had been victims of this problem.
Among the opposition leaders in the crowd was Anastasia Udaltsova, wife of Sergei Udaltsov, who is currently under house arrest awaiting trial on charges of plotting unrest but who helped organize the march.
Udaltsova said the march should set a good example for other regions of Russia, a sentiment echoed by Ponomaryov.
"Because of the word 'Muscovites' in the name of the march, we couldn't reach the all-Russia status, but I know that similar events will be held in a majority of Russian regions in March," Ponomaryov said.
Left Front activist Alexei Baikov said he didn't believe that authorities would listen to the rally's demands. "Of course authorities won't implement any of our demands. They must be implemented by those who will come in place of these authorities, which is why we are here," he said.
Ponomaryov said he hoped the demonstration's local focus would help rally support for opposition candidates in Moscow elections to be held next year.
"We're starting to prepare for Moscow City Duma elections, and our aim is to create a joint coalition that would be based on these very demands," he said. "All who share them, no matter what their political views, must join and gain the majority of seats."?