Russia Braces for Nationwide Protests

Wall Street Propagandists Scramble to Cover U.S. Ties to Russian Protesters

Wall Street and London’s media machine claims Russia’s protests are “leaderless” and not being organized by political opposition movements – even as it interviews protest organizers such as, Boris Nemtsov, who takes to stages build amidst supposedly “spontaneous” protests with a troupe of US NED-funded NGO leaders and opposition parties cheerleading what is clearly yet another Western-funded color revolution.

December 11, 2011

Tony Cartalucci - As the evidence begins to mount pointing the accusing finger at the increasingly illegitimate corporate-financier occupiers of the West’s governments as having built up Russian opposition movements and being behind the current unrest filling Russia’s streets, the corporate media has already started to rewrite events as they unfold.

An amazing piece of mid-event revisionism titled, “Moscow braces as election protest goes viral,” desperately attempts to portray the protests as “leaderless” even as the article itself interviews “organizers.” Quoting unnamed, and most likely nonexistent protesters, the article featured in the Sydney Morning Herald insists protesters claimed,

“I came on my own. I learnt about it on the web.” But the article then states (emphasis added), “and last night, thanks to the web, organisers were expecting more than 30,000 people to demonstrate against what they see as the rigged results of last Sunday’s elections, because that’s how many have committed themselves to a sign-up sheet on Facebook.”

While the article claims that no political party is recruiting protesters, earlier reports out of the Western media contradict this entirely, with the London Telegraph reproducing a blog post by US NED-funded opposition leader Boris Nemtsov stating before the December 10 protests,

“I am talking about pickets at Petrovka 38 (the main police station) and on Simferopol Boulevard where the detained are being held, and other actions too. We start from today. I will take part in all this myself. On Saturday, December 10, a general meeting will be held on Revolution Square (in Moscow) at two o’clock to protest against these false elections. ”

The Daily Mail has also reported,”and Moscow rally organiser, opposition politician Vladimir Ryzhkov, has announced there will be another protest on December 24, which he says will be twice as large,” and RIA Novosti News reporting, “on a stage emblazoned with the logo “Return Power to the People” Russia’s best known opposition figures, from cultural leaders like Navalny and opposition music critic Artemy Troitsky to opposition politicians Boris Nemtsov, Vladimir Ryzhkov and Solidarnost youth leader Ilya Yashin, addressed the hyped-up crowds.”

Russia Braces for Nationwide Protests

December 10, 2011

Al Jazeera - Russia is bracing itself for the first nationwide protest against Vladimir Putin’s 12-year rule amid signs of swelling anger over a poll won by his ruling United Russia party with the alleged help of widescale fraud.

Moscow authorities gave permission for 30,000 people to gather on a square across the river from the Kremlin at 10:00 GMT after detaining some 1,600 activists over the past few days who joined unsanctioned rallies against the December 4 vote.

The opposition is also organising rallies in at least 14 other major cities in a rare outpouring of mistrust in a system put in place by Putin when he first became president in 2000.

A 30,000-strong demonstration would be the largest to hit the Russian capital in 20 years, in what some see as the first warning bell for the former foreign agent and his secretive inner circle of security chiefs.

Al Jazeera’s Neave Barker reporting from says:

“Troops from the interior ministry and water cannons are also on standby in Moscow.”

“I do think, that if the protestors to try and widen the rally, then there could well be a clampdown,” said our reporter.

The authorities’ decision to permit Saturday’s rallies to go ahead nationwide is a first for the Putin era and suggests the Kremlin would prefer to avoid street battles between protesters and the riot police.

Putin’s United Russia has been bruised by allegations of corruption, after opposition parties and international observers said the vote was marred by vote-rigging, including alleged ballot-box stuffing and false voter rolls.

The official results of the elections to Russia’s Duma showed that the ruling party United Russia lost 77 of its 315 seats, just retaining a small majority.

Neave Barker, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in Moscow, said there is a widespread view, fuelled by mobile phone videos and accounts on internet social networking sites, that there was wholesale election fraud, and that Putin’s party cheated its way to victory.

Putin accepted the vote’s outcome but stayed silent about the protests for three days before accusing US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of inciting the unrest by questioning the polls.

He said Clinton’s criticism “had set the tone for some people inside the country and given a signal”. US State Department spokesman Mark Toner retorted that “nothing could be further from the truth”.

Putin has remained Russia’s most popular and powerful politician as both president until 2008 and prime minister today - an image he has cultivated with tough talking against foreign powers and warm words for the Soviet past.