In the largest opposition protest Russia has seen in years, people gather to protest the election fraud in which Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his party are accused of rigging the parlimentary election this weekend.
Estimates have placed the number of protesters as high as 10,000. The cries of "Russia without Putin" pierce through the air.
300 protesters were detained to stop them from marching in addition to the estimated 200 arrests.
Putin's party United Russia won about 50% of the votes, but most are claiming this is due to ballot box stuffing and other forms of election fraud. Regardless after twelve years the public is sending Putin a message of their weariness of his control of the government.
He first rose to power as acting President in 1999 when President Boris Yeltsin resigned. He was then elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004 drawing out his career as President until May 2008. He then became Prime Minister and has remained so until now. If he continues to stay in power for the two next elections he will have done so for a quarter of a century.
Interestingly enough the only independent election monitoring group called Golos, was disabled on Sunday the day of elections by hackers. Its director and her assistant's cellphones, social media and email accounts were all hacked as well on the day of elections. Golos is funded by US and European grants.
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