Russian democracy protests have entered a new phase, it’s just tricky to work out why

Moscow is in the middle of a charm offensive after Trump’s unexpected talk of readmission to the G8

Russia’s young revolutionaries seem more ready to risk their personal freedom than older generations (EPA)

On Saturday, at the opposition’s protest march in Moscow, the Kremlin pulled off a surprise. There were none of the usual tricks accompanying “unsanctioned” protests.

Central Moscow was not shut down. The internet stayed on. There was no violence. No flying truncheons. No mass arrests. No harsh sentencing. Not even Lyubov Sobol, the emergent star of Moscow’s summer of rebellion, was taken in.

Instead, the rally ended up being the most peaceful since the opposition first took to the streets in July to protest their candidates being barred from next Sunday’s municipal elections.

So what was different this time?

It’s difficult to be certain about the Kremlin’s often contradictory thinking, but three things immediately come to mind.

On the one hand, Moscow is in the middle of a charm offensive, not least following President Trump’s unexpected talk of readmission to the G8.

However unlikely that prospect currently seems, Moscow is banking on a partial rehabilitation in Europe. To this end there are strong rumours of an imminent prisoner exchange with Kiev (already mistakenly reported by some outlets). Ukrainian cause celebre​ Oleh Sentsov has already been transferred from Siberia to Moscow.

Second, the opposition is now a split force, and some of its more radical elements stayed at home. Alexei Navalny, the man the Kremlin fears most, refrained from calling his supporters onto the streets. His focus has shifted from rallies to encouraging “clever” voting strategies at the municipal elections. That may have been interpreted as a retreat of sorts.

Third, numbers were much reduced from similar protests of 27 July and 3 August. At a push, there may have been a few thousand attending. This opened up a tactical window for the Kremlin: it allowed them to avoid scandal ahead of Sunday’s municipal elections while allowing attention to fall on the opposition’s pathetic levels of street support.

For the opposition, it was, of course, a bittersweet afternoon. There was no blood on the streets. But it was also clear that the momentum of early August had died.

Whether summer 2019 comes to leave a mark on future developments will likely depend on how young students – the protest’s loudest voices and the most obvious victims of the subsequent clampdown – react to that disappointment.

Will they develop widespread solidarity with their colleagues, dozens of whom are facing expulsion from university and/or up to eight years in prison? Or will they, like the generations before them, succumb to fear and find modes of conformity?

There is no obvious history to fall back on.

Russia’s security services have certainly turned to the Soviet playbook in terms of using night-time arrests and harsh punishments to increase the price of resistance. But that is where the parallels end.

There were few protests of this sort in Soviet Russia, and none fronted so obviously by the youngest generation. Back then, there was also no easy way to distribute information about repressions, bar the underground Samizdat publications.

Anecdotally, Russia’s young revolutionaries do seem much more carefree and ready to risk their personal freedom than older generations. Ironically, they also seem to have far fewer hang ups about his regime’s repressive teeth than those who knew life before Putin, the former spy, took charge.

That underlying tension would suggest Saturday’s soft-touch approach will prove an aberration rather than the rule.

Yours,

Oliver Carroll

Moscow correspondent