Communist Party members will join Saturday's "March of Millions" opposition protest, the party's local committee director said Wednesday, marking the first time since December that the Communists will participate in a mass anti-Kremlin demonstration under the party banner.
Valery Rashkin said Wednesday that Communists would attend Saturday's march
from Pushkin Square to Prospekt Akademika Sakharova because the party agreed with most of the goals of the protest, including early parliamentary elections and change in the country's political system, Interfax reported.
Rashkin said six State Duma deputies and three city lawmakers from the party — all from the Moscow party committee — would be in the Communist contingent at the march.
But deputy chair of the party's central committee Vladimir Kashin told Interfax that first secretary Gennady Zyuganov and other higher-ups did not plan to attend the event. Instead, they favored the party's own day of protests later this month.
Kashin also contradicted Rashkin's statement regarding the compatibility of the demands to be made at the opposition event with those of the Communist Party, saying they "radically differed."
Kashin said Communist Party rallies would be held Sept. 22 in cities across Russia, including on Ploshchad Revolyutsii in Moscow, to protest rising prices for utilities and Russia's accession to the WTO last month.
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