Police authorised a protest this weekend but have warned anyone taking part in an unsanctioned walk they will face consequences.
It is 20 years to the day since Boris Yeltsin named the head of Russia's top spy agency his acting prime minister.Thus began two decades in power in which the state's grip over the lives of its citizens would tighten - the heady democratic bounce of the 1990s, accompanied as it was by traumatic economic upheaval, would lead many Russians to buy into his apparent logic of order over political freedoms.
But to anyone who watched the clinical way in which riot police shut down protests the last two weekends, detaining almost 2,400 people - the vast majority for no reason other than that they showed up to an unsanctioned rally - that comfortable if utterly sanitised lifestyle comes at a cost. Let's just look back a second at where this all started. A decision by someone, somewhere in the mayor's office, that allowing liberal candidates on to the ballot for the Moscow city assembly elections was too much of a risk.
Moscow city assembly elections are not usually a big deal but they do give elected officials oversight over the city's budget - a chance to check into the contracts, perhaps, of some of that fancy new urban planning. Overkill perhaps when their purpose was to seize documents in an investigation into alleged money-laundering they decided to open last Saturday but it's an image which sticks.Protests have been authorised for both Saturday and Sunday but the police have already made clear anyone participating in an unsanctioned evening walk on Saturday will face consequences.
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