#10Дес

Today tens of thousands of protestors took to the streets of cities of Western Russia,  to show Putin and indeed, the rest of the world, the true nature of their anti-government stance. After the Duma elections last week, leaving Putin’s United Russia with a 49% majority (losing 70 seats since the previous 2007 elections), YouTube was flooded with clips of blatant electoral corruption, facebook was in outrage; the statistics were laughable: 90% of the mentally handicapped voted for Putin, and in one region 147% of voters favoured United Russia.

The election saw over 1000 arrests, including that of anti-corruption campaigner Alexei Navalny who became the hero of today’s protests. I have spent the day following a myriad of tweeters (mostly reporters) in order to gauge the sheer scale of the protests. It has proved to be the largest political demonstration in Moscow since the fall of the Soviet Union, with as many as 50,000 people joining together near the Kremlin to loudly express themselves. No one could have predicted it. Just last month, I sat listening to Luke Harding (former Russian correspondent for the Guardian who was expelled in February 2011) mournfully telling his audience that Vladimir Putin could potentially be in power until 2024, without a flicker of dispute from the Russian people. But do banners saying “The rats should go!” and “Putin without Russia!” imply another era of cold-hearted Putinism? I would not be so bold as to speculate whether this signifies the beginning of the end of Vladimir Putin and his FSB dominated state, but as @shaunwalker7 declared “[I] Really don’t think [it is an] exaggeration to say Russia will be changed permanently”. Indeed, BBC correspondent Daniel Sandford stated “It is in many ways a political reawakening”.