It’s clear why the Kremlin did not allow us to hold rallies against raising the retirement age in Russia’s largest cities. Just look at the size of the rallies in Chelyabinsk and Omsk, the biggest cities among those where permission was granted:
In total, our штабs organized actions in 39 cities, and they were very successful. Yesterday’s match, of course, distracted attention from the protests, but that’s not a problem — this will be a long, major battle.
The main thing we saw is this: people are ready to come out, and they are coming out. All kinds of people, from the young to pensioners. By the way, there is a separate point of interest here: what will be written now in the propagandists’ new messaging manuals? It used to be, “Only foolish schoolkids go to Navalny’s rallies.” And now what? “Senile pensioners, incapable of appreciating the joy of working until 65, have fallen for the calls of a opposition politician and convicted criminal?”
Once again, we demonstrated that the political structure we created is capable of effective organization and work. The very mechanisms for organizing rallies, informing people, and involving volunteers are functioning like clockwork. This is what real political work looks like.
It is also good that the rallies were clearly anti-Putin. This time, the Kremlin is failing to play the old “the tsar is good, the boyars are bad” card (a Russian expression meaning the ruler blames subordinates for unpopular policies). People have had enough of that. Even those who voted for Putin three months ago — and there were quite a few of them in the streets yesterday — are laughing and do not believe Peskov’s stories about how Putin is busy working through documents, has a firm handshake, and has heard nothing about this pension robbery, that it is all Medvedev’s doing. Even VTsIOM is recording this. Volkov wrote it correctly: Putin no longer has a safety cushion onto which he can dump all failures. This too is the result of our joint work.
Our campaign against raising the retirement age does not end with these protests. Join us.