Russian marchers commemorate bloody anti-Putin protest

Thousands of Muscovites were due to rally today in commemoration of a bloody protest one year ago in which more than 400 were detained after showing their frustration with Vladimir Putin's return to the presidency.
The "Spring March of Freedom" is being held almost a year to the day since Russian authorities deployed baton-wielding interior ministry troops to disperse a crowd of tens of thousands on the eve of Putin's May 7 swearing-in ceremony.
Dozens of demonstrators and several police officers ended up in hospital in the ensuing clashes.
More than two dozen people now face years in prison on disturbance of order charges. Several have been jailed already.

"We have to come out in defence of those who have been taken hostage," said popular writer and satirist Viktor Shenderovich. "This is our obligation."
But the protest movement has grown fractured since its heyday in the winter of 2011-2012 -- a time when discontent was at a peak over what were seen as stacked December 2011 parliamentary elections and Putin's decision to return to the Kremlin after completing two terms in 2000-2008.

Activists can now barely agree on how they should proceed or reconcile views that range from the far left -- some even openly embracing the late Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin -- to those who support a Western-style democracy.

Those fissures were embarrassingly laid bare when opposition leaders failed to agree on a date to mark the first anniversary of the now infamous protest.
A smaller group will be marching today because they fear that most of its supporters work during the week.
But a much larger section that includes opposition figureheads such as the corruption fighter Alexei Navalny and novelist Boris Akunin plans to hold a rally in Moscow tomorrow -- exactly one year after the event.