Over the last two days, about 300 protesters have been arrested in the heart of Moscow after Vladimir Putin’s “United Russia won the election with just under 50% of the vote, a sharp drop in its support,” reported BBC News. One redditor believes this could be the start of a civil war.
Protesters believe the election was rigged in United Russia’s favor. These allegations have been supported by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who suggested “that the election was neither free nor fair,” reported MSNBC.
Putin has denied allegations of corruption. Following the Sunday election and growing protests, more than 11,500 interior ministry troops were deployed to “ensure order across the country,” reported BBC News.
This police build-up spooked redditor Qwuffl. He wrote in a front page post on Reddit, “News don’t cover it, media is shut down, I’m on phone atm can’t get to work cause traffic is horrible.”
Qwuffl’s post collected about 1,000 comments, most from people who believed the size of the protests and his “civil war” claims were blown out of proportion.
“There indeed was a rally claiming recent election to be not legitimate. Some of my friends were there. People are not too pleased with a large number of violations during election, and with the current government in general,” wrote FeverRay, who claims to be from Moscow. “However, calling this ‘civil war’ is probably the most retarded sensationalist thing I’ve ever read in the Internet.”
Other people in this thread, and another front page post about the protests, compared the movement to Occupy Wall Street.
“It would be like calling Occupy Wall Street a full-blown civil war,” wrote fiat_luz_ “It might be true for some people, and an exaggeration to others (the 99%).”
“Yeah and russian riots won’t even compare to the london or the OccupyWST ones,” wrote legendaris. “These people don’t fuck around… they WILL beat and they WILL kill people if needed…”
“I’m in Moscow right now,” wrote riemannman. “I can affirm to all my fellow Redditors that civil war is not occurring here. Unless you count OWS as civil war too.”
Photo by Peter Oliver
