VZCZCXRO2145
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHMO #1838/01 1101455
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 201455Z APR 07
FM AMEMBASSY MOSCOW
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 9589
INFO RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHXD/MOSCOW POLITICAL COLLECTIVE

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 MOSCOW 001838 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/20/2017 
TAGS: PGOV KDRM PHUM SOCI RS
SUBJECT: OTHER RUSSIA DEMONSTRATIONS CONTINUE TO REVERBERATE 
 
REF: A. MOSCOW 1717 
     ¶B. ST. PETERSBURG 86 
 
Classified By: Pol M/C Alice G. Wells. Reason:  1.4 (b). 
 
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Summary 
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¶1. (C) The April 14 and 15 "Other Russia" demonstrations in 
Moscow and St. Petersburg (reftels) have been the subject of 
much commentary by Russian officials and the media.  Some in 
official Russia have admitted that the law enforcement 
authorities went too far, and in doing so propelled to center 
stage a movement that would have, if left to its own devices, 
faded into oblivion.  Others in Russia's upper reaches have 
been unapologetically critical of Other Russia, while the 
media have arranged themselves across the spectrum. In the 
wake of this apparent official disarray, there are signs 
--the court decision to label the National Bolshevik Party 
extremist and the FSB summons of Other Russia's Garry 
Kasparov-- that those favoring a tougher line against Other 
Russia adherents may have the upper hand. Commentators agree 
that the April 14, 15 events could mark a turning point in 
the Kremlin's treatment of its most uncompromising opponents. 
 The litmus test, they think, for a Presidential 
Administration whose wandering eye occasionally still looks 
West, is the fate of Kasparov who, however marginal he may be 
in Moscow as a politician, commands media attention outside 
the country, and cannot be tagged as corrupt, like ex-Prime 
Minister Kasyanov, or on the fringe, like National Bolshevik 
Eduard Limonov.  End summary. 
 
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Different Politicians, Different Responses 
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¶2. (SBU) In the wake of the occasionally violent dispersal of 
the April 14 and 15 Other Russia demonstrations in Moscow and 
St. Petersburg (reftels), most major national politicians 
have weighed in on the conduct of the police and the behavior 
of Other Russia (OR).  Not unexpectedly, most of those close 
to the Kremlin have criticized the conduct of the 
demonstrators.  Duma Chairman and pro-Kremlin United Russia 
Chairman Boris Gryzlov termed the OR protests "provocations" 
and held that the police had behaved properly.  Gryzlov told 
the media that a Duma working group would be formed to 
investigate "who paid for the provocations." 
 
¶3. (SBU) Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov agreed with Gryzlov, and 
even suggested that OR demonstrators had been bussed in from 
other cities and paid for their efforts.  Gryzlov and Luzhkov 
were seconded by Duma First Deputy Chairwoman Lyubov Sliska, 
who called OR "irresponsible" for allegedly using young 
people to do its dirty work. 
 
¶4. (SBU) Other officials have spoken more carefully in the 
week following the demonstrations.  Human Rights Ombudsman 
Vladimir Lukin termed the police response "excessive," and 
publicly invited complaints from those who had suffered at 
the hands of law enforcement.  "The Constitution clearly says 
that Russian citizens have the right to peacefully convene 
and participate in meetings and marches," Lukin noted. 
Presidential Administration First Deputy Press Secretary 
Dmitriy Peskov April 17 described the behavior of the police 
as "excessive," while Presidential Aide for European Union 
Affairs Sergey Yastrzhembskiy called for an official 
investigation of their conduct.  St. Petersburg Governor 
Valentina Matviyenko, whose administration banned the first 
OR march, then licensed the April 15 affair only to see it 
end violently, asked her administration to pay scrupulous 
attention to all complaints and, if the facts were confirmed, 
"take all necessary measures under existing law." Communist 
Party leader Gennadiy Zyuganov said "the actions of the 
police and the special forces were entirely inappropriate, 
and the Prosecutor's Office needs to investigate." 
 
¶5. (SBU) The media have also chosen sides on the 
demonstrations, although some newspapers were careful to 
hedge their bets.  Predictably, Channel One, Rossiya, and NTV 
chose not to cover the demonstrations at all, or paid them 
glancing attention.  The lone exception was Marianna 
Maksimovskaya's "The Week" news program on REN-TV, which 
offered a no-holds-barred version of events.  In the more 
heterogeneous world of print media, Novaya Gazeta, 
predictably, has been most critical of the police response, 
followed by Kommersant, but Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Novye 
Izvestiya, and Moskovskiy Komsomolets have also expressed 
unhappiness with the treatment of OR participants and 
bystanders.  The government's Rossiyskaya Gazeta has been 
uniformly critical of OR. 
 
 
MOSCOW 00001838  002 OF 002 
 
 
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Ryzhkov Rationalizes His Decision to Participate 
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¶6. (C) In the wake of the demonstrations, Embassy spoke 
briefly with Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov who, after 
denouncing OR earlier in the year, had unexpectedly brought 
some members of his recently de-registered Russian Republican 
Party to the April 14 OR event.  Ryzhkov glossed over his 
earlier efforts to distance himself from OR, saying only that 
he saw nothing contradictory about his participation in the 
unauthorized meeting and his Duma membership.  Since April 
14, Ryzhkov has been outspokenly critical of the GOR, calling 
in the Duma for an investigation of police behavior during 
the protest, holding Luzhkov "personally responsible" for 
police brutality, and asserting that "people go to the 
streets when they cannot find parties of their choice at the 
polling stations." (In an April 13 meeting with visiting DAS 
David Kramer, Ryzhkov said nothing about his participation in 
the OR event.  He was worried about the December Duma 
elections, in which he would not be able to participate 
unless he found a party able to put him on the list.  Ryzhkov 
said he had conducted on-again, off-again negotiations with 
SPS, but he was not certain that the party's godfather, 
Anatoliy Chubais, would allow him onto the SPS party list 
without a nod from the Kremlin.  He thought Kremlin approval 
was unlikely, as Presidential Administration Deputy Vladislav 
"Surkov hates me.") 
 
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GOR At A Critical Juncture? 
--------------------------- 
 
¶7. (C) In an April 19 conversation, the Moscow Carnegie 
Center's Masha Lipman ascribed the differently-calibrated 
responses to the weekend's events to disarray driven above 
all by the fear that someone, somewhere could hold key 
politicians responsible for the ugly outcome of the 
demonstrations. Lipman saw the fact that ex-Prime Minister 
Kasyanov had not been detained, while Kasparov had been as 
further evidence of disarray. Lipman joined virtually all 
commentators here in terming OR a numerically and 
ideologically marginal group whose importance had only been 
enhanced by the GOR's disproportionate response.  Allowing OR 
to march, Lipman said, would have been the most effective way 
of consigning it to oblivion.  Now, she suggested the GOR 
with the April 14, 15 events was at a "turning point," and 
she termed the treatment of Kasparov key in gauging what its 
decision would be. (The media report April 20 that the FSB 
interviewed Kasparov for four hours, but that no concrete 
questions about extremism were asked.) 
 
¶8. (C) The outlines of one potential GOR response appeared to 
be emerging, with some politicians --among them Duma 
International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin 
Kosachev-- suggesting that there was a link between alleged 
U.S. government plans to foment democracy in Russia, 
oligarch-in-exile Boris Berezovskiy's intention to stage a 
revolution, and the OR street actions.  The official 
Rossiyskaya Gazeta also tried the cabal on for size in a 
post-demonstration article.  Perhaps not coincidentally, the 
official Rossiya television channel April 15 broadcast a 
Quebec-made documentary film that used the U.S. government to 
connect the dots of the "color revolutions" in Serbia, 
Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan.  The film was allegedly 
edited and creatively translated in order to make it more 
provocative than the original. 
 
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Comment 
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¶9. (C) Events scheduled over the next week or so will force 
the GOR to show its hand.  Moscow Helsinki Group and "For 
Human Rights" plan a meeting of solidarity with OR on April 
26 in Moscow, while OR plans to attempt a second meeting in 
Nizhniy Novgorod on April 28.  It seems at this juncture that 
a decision by the GOR to back off its forceful response to 
earlier demonstrations, however, would only further embolden 
OR, and it may be that eventuality that will be decisive in 
determining what course the authorities will take. 
BURNS