Tens of thousands of protesters continue to demonstrate in Khabarovsk, Russia, for the third week straight in an forceful show of civil disobedience against the Putin administration. The protests, which began on July 11, are in response to the Kremlin-led arrest of the popular Khabarovsk Krai governor Sergei Furgal for accusations of multiple murders.
Khabarovsk is the administrative center of Khabarovsk Krai and a city of almost 600,000 people who live over 4,000 miles away from Moscow. Governor Sergei Furgal, who was elected to his position in September 2018, beat Kremlin-backed incumbent Vyacheslav Shport and has since been viewed negatively by President Vladimir Putin. Furgal is a member of the Liberal Democratic Party, while Shport is a member of United Russia, the country’s ruling party.
Governor Furgal was arrested on July 9 on allegations that he played a role in the murders of several businessmen in the region in 2004 and 2005. He was flown to Moscow shortly after to be placed on pretrial detention and was replaced by Mikhail Degtyarev, who previously served in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of its Federal Assembly.
“How can Putin's trust be more important than the trust of the people?” protester Zahar Zaripov said in an interview with Deutsche Welle. “Our governor was dismissed by Putin, because he supposedly lost his trust. And what about our trust? We were the ones who elected the governor, not Putin!”
The protests have since spread to other cities in the region, such as Novosibirsk and Vladivostok. Protests in Russia’s Far East are rare; most take place in Moscow or St. Petersburg, where the Kremlin is generally able to exercise its control much more easily.
Many of the protesters not only view the ongoing demonstrations as a show of support for Furgal, but as an act of defiance against a corrupt presidential administration. A little over four weeks ago, President Putin won an allegedly fraudulent constitutional referendum which would allow him to hold his current position through 2036.
“When a person lives not knowing how things are supposed to be, he thinks things are good,” protester Artyom Aksyonov said in an interview with The New York Times. “But when you open your eyes to the truth, you realize things were not good. This was all an illusion.”
Another protester, Alexander Gogolev, expressed his disdain toward the Kremlin in an interview with The Guardian.
“The center is sucking resources from the Far East,” Gogolev said. “[And we get] nothing in return.”
This defiance toward the Putin administration has not been limited to the protesters in Khabarovsk Krai. Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the leader of the Liberal Democratic Party, protested the results of the constitutional referendum as well as the arrest of Furgal.
“We gave you the constitution, and you’re putting us in handcuffs,” Zhirinovsky said. “Shameless! You are sitting in high office and start acting like Stalin!”
Zhirinovsky later signaled that his supporters in the Federal Assembly may resign in protest if the situation does not improve.
Governor Furgal is currently in custody in a Moscow jail as he awaits his trial, which does not yet have a definitive date but may take place as early as Sept. 9. Protests are expected to continue throughout Khabarovsk Krai for the foreseeable future.
Jacob Sutherland
is a recent graduate from the University of California San Diego where he majored in Political Science and minored in Spanish Language Studies. He previously served as the News Editor for The UCSD Guardian, and hopes to shed light on social justice issues in his work.