ORYOL, Russia: About 200 kilometers southwest of Moscow, Oryol is a world away from the bright lights and prosperity of the Russian capital. To understand the tens of thousands of protesters who marched across the country to protest the arrest of Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny, look here.
Oriol’s industry never fully recovered from the post-Soviet collapse of Russia. The factories, once proud, are abandoned. Some parts of the city lack interior toilets and running water. With few job prospects, many young people feel they have no choice but to leave.
Mr Navalny’s treatment may have ignited recourse to the protests, but rallies quickly became an outlet for widespread complaints from Russians about falling living standards, collapsing infrastructure and corruption. chronicle, and marked a tectonic shift in relations between ordinary citizens and the Kremlin. .
“People don’t go out to protest for someone, but against something,” said Artyom Prokhorov, a marketing manager at Oryol who shares a two-bedroom apartment with his ex-wife and two children. “Navalny simply served as a trigger. People are fed up with what’s going on here. “
For much of the twenty years that President Vladimir Putin was in power, oil prices were high and economic growth was solid. Russian military interventions abroad provoked national pride. And the Russians stayed out of opposition politics and protests.