A small group of Russian nationalists gathered Sunday at Bolotnaya Ploshchad — where the largest public rally in Russia in nearly 20 years was held the day before — to mark the one-year anniversary of the Manezh riots and demand new elections.
Roughly 300 people — "50 of whom were members of the media covering the event" — massed for the authorized rally around 2 p.m., the Interior Ministry said.
The gathering attracted people of all ages, many of whom covered their faces and carried nationalist flags. Some football fans were also among the participants, Rusnovosti.ru .
According to Interfax, the nationalists demanded that last week's State Duma elections be overturned and that the government end the repression of nationalists by allowing them to officially register as a political party. They also called for the release of those jailed under the charge of "extremism."
They expressed their disagreement with the migration policy of the government and called on the mayor of Moscow to strongly consider "the need for public policies on migration in the interests of citizens and the importance of the actual existence of constitutional rights and freedoms," Komsomolskaya Pravda .
The protest went peacefully and ended around 3:30 p.m. when the demonstrators marched south to the Tretyakovskaya metro station, Interfax reported.
The demonstration had been organized in honor of the one-year anniversary of the violent protest on Manezh Square on Dec. 11, 2010, when 5,000 nationalists clashed with police following the release of a man from the Caucasus accused in the killing of a Slavic football fan during a brawl.
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