By IANS/RIA Novosti,
Moscow : Thousands of people have started a protest in Moscow against alleged election fraud during the parliamentary polls, which saw a big slump in support for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party.
Crowd numbers were estimated Monday evening at around 5,000. There were an unconfirmed number of arrests as the crowd gathered at Moscow’s Chistye Prudy region.
“I’ve never seen anything like this. A sea of pi**ed off young Russians, revved up and loud,” wrote Foreign Policy magazine’s Moscow correspondent Julia Ioffe on Twitter.
A number of protesters called on the police to “be with the people”. Others carried banners that said “Down with the Party of Swindlers and Thieves!”.
The Dec 4 elections were marred by widespread allegations of poll procedure in favour of the ruling United Russia, with dozens of clips appearing to show election fraud uploaded onto the internet.
The polls saw United Russia suffer its worst ever result. While the party of Prime Minster Vladimir Putin and President Dmitry Medvedev managed to hold onto a simple parliamentary majority, its share of the vote slumped from 64 percent to under 50 percent.