Dozens of people gathered outside the Presidential Administration in Moscow to submit petitions against the blocking of messaging apps and the shutdown of mobile internet access.
The Rassvet party had announced the mass petition drive in advance. Among those who came to the reception office were politicians Boris Nadezhdin and Yulia Galyamina.
“Society needs to understand that there are enough safe ways to express your attitude toward the blocking,” Galyamina told the Telegram news channel SotaVision. Nadezhdin told journalists that the point of the action was to submit a large number of petitions, and that many people who could not attend in person had also submitted petitions electronically.
People waited in line for up to an hour and a half to submit their petitions, a SotaVision correspondent on the scene reported. Participants estimated that around 200 people came to the reception office in total.
Several protests against internet restrictions had been planned across Russia in late March, but authorities refused to approve all of them on various grounds. Five people who had filed to hold an anti-blocking rally in Moscow and were linked to the anonymous movement Alyi Lebed (Scarlet Swan), which Meduza wrote about in detail, were placed under administrative detention. On March 29, the day the protests had been planned, police detained 12 people at Bolotnaya Square in Moscow.
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