In Moscow, protest against election results passed peacefully

Today, a protest rally against the results of the elections to the Russian State Duma was held in Moscow.

According to organizers of the rally, the protest action in Bolotnaya Square and surrounding areas gathered about 150 thousand people. In its turn, the Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) claims that "messages of different sources, including the organizers of the rally, reporting on the extremely large number of participants does not correspond to reality." According to the MIA' estimates, total number of the participants reached 25 thousand people.

The next opposition protest rally against the results of the elections to the State Duma is to be held at 4:00 p.m. on December 17 in Pushkin Square in Moscow. The "Yabloko" Party is the organizer of the new protest action. The organizers of the today's rally invited all participants to attend the rally on December 17. They announce their intention to hold an entire series of protests actions till the government decides to recognize the results of the elections as illegitimate, the "Caucasian Knot" correspondent reports.

The keynote of the protest action held today is the demand to recognize the illegitimacy of the recent elections to the State Duma of the Russian Federation and to conduct open and fair elections. Furthermore, the protest action was held under the slogans reading: "Corruption means poor budget", "Lack of housing and poor wages mean lack of children", "Putin, go away", "Putin should resign", "Putin is a thief."

Participants of the rally held the flags of the "Solidarity", the CPRF (the Communist Party of the Russian Federation), the "People's Democratic Union" and other parties.

Boris Nemtsov, Gennady Gudkov, Grigory Yavlinsky, Leonid Parfenov, Oleg Orlov, Sergey Parkhomenko, Mikhail Kasyanov, Andrei Nechaev, Vladimir Ryzhkov and observers from the Public Chamber and human rights activists delivered their speeches to the audience.

During the speech of the CPRF's representative, the audience chanted: "Return your mandate!" At the end of the rally, the participants chanted the slogan: "Let's finish the December with our flag over the Kremlin."