Opposition activists are refusing to back down in their bid to stage a rally in support of the Bolotnaya case defendants at the end of October.
City Hall on Thursday rejected their application to hold a 30,000-man march on Oct. 26 on the grounds that the application form had been filled out incorrectly. Security official Vasily Oleinik said that it would be impossible to process another application to organize a rally for the same date due to time constraints.
But the co-organizers have come back with another proposal, this time for Oct. 27. "The request is the same, as well as the route," said Pyotr Tsarkov, an activist from the Solidarity movement, Interfax reported Friday.
Organizers plan to lead a procession from Pushkin Square to Turgenev Square, and then finally on to Lubyanskaya Ploschad.
The march is intended as a show of support for the 12 defendants in the Bolotnaya case, who are currently on trial for their participating in an authorized anti-government rally on Bolotnaya Ploshchad on May 6, 2012, that ended in scuffles with police. The opposition believes the authorities provoked the clashes to clamp down on the growing protest movement in Russia.
The new application will be considered in due course, City Hall said.
