Opposition activists have moved to stage a protest entitled the “March of Peace and Freedom” on April 19, organizer Alexander Ryklin announced via Facebook on Monday.
The organizers filed an application with City Hall seeking permission for some 30,000 participants to march through the heart of the capital.
While they specifically requested permission to begin the procession at Trubnaya Ploshchad and to end on Ploshchad Revolyutsii, right next to the Kremlin, they voiced a willingness to negotiate the locations — so long as the route runs along one of Moscow's central boulevards, Ryklin said in comments carried by Interfax on Monday.
Ryklin said, however, he will not entertain the notion of shifting the protest to the outskirts of the city, a plight common among requested opposition marches.
“The rally does not have a clear slogan. For the first time we do not put any demands to the government,” he told Interfax.
Ilya Yashin, another member of the Russian opposition, told Interfax that the rally is an independent initiative launched by several opposition members and likely will not draw an enormous turnout.
“This action is a private initiative of several Moscow activists. We sympathize with them, but RPR-PARNAS party is not taking part in the organization of this event,” he said.
Earlier, in a March 23 tweet, Pyotr Tsarkov, co-chair of the political party Solidarnost, had listed RPR-PARNAS as among the organizers.
The last large-scale march to take place in Moscow was on March 1, commemorating the tragic death of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, who was murdered two days earlier, steps from the Kremlin.
Nemtsov was among the organizers of an initial rally planned for March 1, which was set to take place in Marino, a residential district far from the city center.
After Nemtsov's death, municipal authorities agreed to let demonstrators march through the city center in the form of a memorial march instead.
Contact the author at i.nechepurenko@imedia.ru
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