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- Graduated from St. Petersburg State University in 1975
- Served in the KGB from 1975 to 1990
- Prime Minister (2008 to 2012)
- President (since 2012)

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- Largest country in the world (6,612,100 square miles)
- Capital: Moscow
- Population: 144 million
- Current constitution formed in 1993
- $4.152 trillion GDP

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- Increased pension age
- Invasion of Ukraine
- Discrimination against homosexuals & ethnic minorities
- Military operations in Chechnya

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Thousands of people across Russia joined protests on Sunday against government plans to raise the pension age, despite recent promises by President Vladimir Putin to soften the unpopular measure.

The protests show that the proposed policy remains a politically sensitive issue for the government despite concessions offered by Putin in a televised address on Wednesday. During the speech, Putin took personal responsibility for the reform for the first time and described it as a financial necessity.

About 9,000 people gathered about a mile and a half from the Kremlin, according to White Counter, an NGO that counts participants at rallies. Moscow police put the numbers at 6,000.

Many carried the red flags and banners of the principal organiser of the protest, the KPRF Communist party.

A large banner reading "We do not trust United Russia", Putin's ruling party, was held up by the crowd and featured a drawing of a red fist punching the white polar bear logo of Putin's party.

"Today we are holding an all-Russia protest against this cannibalistic reform," veteran Communist party leader Gennady Zyuganov said, addressing the crowd.

A separate gathering in the city, organised by the Just Russia party, attracted a further 1,500 people protesting against the pension reforms, Moscow police said.

In his address on Wednesday, Putin watered down the original draft pension reform legislation, introduced by the government on 14 June, which opinion polls showed was opposed by 90% of Russians and which has provoked a string of protests in recent weeks.

Polls by the Levada Centre show Putin's personal approval rating has fallen around 10 percentage points since the pension reforms were proposed, although it still stands at around 70%.

Putin offered to cut the proposed retirement age for women to 60, from a retirement age of 63 first proposed by the government. Russian women currently retire at 55. Putin said that the proposal to raise the pension age for men from 60 to 65 would remain unchanged.

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Putin's personal approval rating has dropped since the reform plans were announced, according to polls. Photograph: Maxim Shipenkov/EPA

In St Petersburg, the Fontanka newspaper said that around 1,500 people gathered to protest, while the Interfax news agency said 1,200 joined a protest in Novosibirsk and 250 in Vladivostok.

In Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, around 450 people took part in a demonstration entitled the 'Regiment of Shame', during which protesters held portraits of politicians who have voiced their support for pension reform, local newspaper Nasha Gazeta said.

In Russia's south, there were protests in the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk, Astrakhan, Rostov-on-Don and in the capitals of the Caucasus republics of Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria, according to Interfax.

People also took to the streets in the town of Simferopol in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula annexed by Russia from Ukraine in 2014, Interfax added.
Topics

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Thousands protest in Russia against plans to hike pension age

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Thousands of people across Russia joined protests on Sunday against government plans to raise the pension age, despite recent promises by President Vladimir Putin to soften the unpopular measure. The protests show that the proposed policy remains a politically sensitive issue for the government despite concessions offered by Putin in a televised address on Wednesday.

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- Putin has not done anything to aid his people
- He shows almost zero interest in answering his people's protests
- He denies all cases of federal corruption

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As tens of thousands of people gathered in Moscow on December 10 to protest recent parliamentary elections, it was clear that Vladimir Putin and his regime faced the biggest political crisis in Russia since the fall of communism. After five days of near silence, Mr. Putin gave his response. Following a format that he himself invented, he sat down in front of a live television audience to answer scores of carefully screened questions.

Four and a half hours later, the carefully selected questions and emphatic answers revealed Mr. Putin's emerging strategy. Although he acknowledged the people's mood and offered some reforms, he dismissed any charges of election fraud and crudely insulted the political opposition. The elections, he argued, were an accurate reflection of the political forces in Russia: the party of power - United Russia - had even lost ground. In the end, Mr. Putin was sending a message to (what he hopes is) a silent majority of Russians: any problems are "normal" and will be solved during Russia's continued stable development.

Message Received

From the very beginning of this staged question and answer session, it was clear that this one would be different. Instead of opening the session with a long laundry list of accomplishments as he had in the past, Mr. Putin addressed a series of questions surrounding the recent protests in the center of Moscow. Abandoning his flimsy claim that the protests were orchestrated by the United States, Mr. Putin acknowledged that the people were dissatisfied with the political system and that he was happy to see the protestors legally voicing their opinions.

Once he had acknowledged the people's dissatisfaction, he turned his attention to the disputed election. Drawing an implicit distinction between the "political opposition" and the "people", Mr. Putin dismissed the evidence showing widespread election fraud. These allegations, he argued, were simply the "natural" reaction of a political opposition that was dissatisfied with the elections and was trying to "destabilize society." And the opposition? He could not avoid a crude attack on their white ribbons, confessing that his first thought was that they were part of an anti-AIDS campaign because they looked like "tied up condoms."

To ensure that similar charges were not leveled against the upcoming March presidential elections, Mr. Putin emphatically stated that web cameras should be placed in every polling station across Russia's vast landmass. These cameras would work day and night and the opposition could see for themselves that the election was free and fair. He also stated that it would make sense to liberalize the regime of registering political parties.

Trust me, We Have Everything Under Control

Once he had dismissed any charges of fraud, Mr. Putin acknowledged that the people did have a legitimate grievance: the political system was increasingly plagued by a growing gulf between the people and the regional elite. After recounting a story of a local official too scared to face his own constituents, he put forward his most concrete reform proposal of the session: a return to a system of elections for regional representatives. Subject to appropriate presidential filtering, these elections would ensure that mid-level officials would no longer be able to stay in power by ignoring the demands of their constituents.

Other than this proposal to return to a system of "controlled elections", however, Mr. Putin - much as he did almost a month earlier at the Valdai Conference - failed to go into any further details about concrete solutions to Russia's existing political or economic challenges (including the dangers of an oil price below $80 a barrel). He demonstrated vague support for devolving power to the local level (remembering a meeting he had with Aleksandr Solzhentisyn on this topic) but gave few specifics on how his local power would be increased in his top-down system of power. Other than that, his proposals were bereft of detail.

This was perhaps best demonstrated when Putin faced a softball question about his "mission" if elected president in March 2012. After spending most of his answer cataloguing his previous accomplishments, he spent a brief time rotely declaring Russia's need to "diversify the economy", "strengthen its political system", and "develop the social sphere." Behind these slogans, his message was clear: trust me, we will continue a stable and orderly process of development.

We Don't Need Great Revolutions!

Mr. Putin's question and answer session therefore was not directed at the internet-savvy, westernized elite who are demanding tangible change and furiously organizing another protest for December 24th in Moscow. Instead, Mr. Putin's vague promises of "stable development" were directed at what Putin hopes is his own silent majority: the pensioners, factory workers, and office workers who have benefited from ten years of "stable development." The regime is hoping that this majority will agree with a Russian factory worker and Duma member who addressed Mr. Putin early in the session. Instead of asking a concrete question, he simply addressed all Russians and said "In every family and house there are problems. . . . We Russians have always endured. We don't need great revolutions."

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As tens of thousands of people gathered in Moscow on December 10 to protest recent parliamentary elections, it was clear that Vladimir Putin and his regime faced the biggest political crisis in Russia since the fall of communism. After five days of near silence, Mr. Putin gave his response.

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Sunday in Moscow was a bright spring day, chilly but clear, and by the time I made my way to Tverskaya Street, Moscow's main thoroughfare, the sidewalks were full of people strolling up, toward Pushkin Square, and down, toward Red Square and the red-brick towers of the Kremlin. They had come out for a march led by Alexey Navalny, Russia's savviest and most popular opposition politician, who had declared a nationwide day of anti-corruption action. The protest was one of mere presence, rather than any specific activity: a few people held signs, and every now and then a chant broke out, but the main political statement of the day was simply showing up.

The nominal cause for the march, and for similar gatherings in dozens of cities across the country, was alleged corruption that Navalny and his researchers had unearthed about Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's largely enfeebled Prime Minister. Earlier this month, Navalny had published a report detailing various far-flung properties, luxury yachts, and other high-end goods that Medvedev has allegedly acquired over the years, in part funded by contributions that Russian oligarchs made to fake charity foundations. But Sunday's demonstrations were also about a creeping mood of public dissatisfaction and fatigue, a sense that, after seventeen years, Vladimir Putin's political system was running out of arguments to justify its continued monopoly hold on power. Official corruption proved to be a more compelling rallying cry than civil rights or voting irregularities: less about abstract political freedoms and more about the insult of learning that your country's Prime Minister had acquired a vineyard in Tuscany while disposable incomes dropped an average of twelve per cent since 2014.

The Moscow mayor's office had not authorized the march route-it had instead offered organizers the use of a park outside the city center-and had cautioned that it could not "bear responsibility for any possible negative consequences" of the unsanctioned demonstration. The warning didn't seem to keep people away. On Tverskaya, it was impossible to judge the size of the crowd, but it was easily several thousand. The official response seemed chaotic and inconsistent. Most people walked unimpeded up and down the street for hours. But Navalny himself was grabbed and thrown into a police van a few minutes after he arrived, with a pair of Nike sneakers hanging from his neck-a riff on one of the charges that he had levelled against Medvedev, who he said used a front company led by a loyal crony to buy himself running shoes.

Near the Central Telegraph building, where I stood, the flow of people passed unbothered, but by Pushkin Square riot police, wearing black body armor and helmets, arrested dozens of people, clubbing and beating them before dragging them away. By the end of the day, as many as a thousand people in Moscow had been detained, far more than in 2011 and 2012, the last time the capital saw demonstrations of this size. A reporter from the Guardian was caught up in the arrests; he was taken to a police station and charged with "holding an unsanctioned rally."

I was struck by how many young people had joined the protest march. During the previous wave of large-scale demonstrations in Moscow, the crowds were largely drawn from the capital's middle class-educated, professional people in their twenties, thirties, and forties. On Sunday, the presence of high schoolers and college students was immediately noticeable. "Never before have schoolchildren and students participated on such a massive scale in opposition protests," Meduza, an independent news site that is home to some of Russia's best journalism, declared. "Teen-agers easily experience feelings of envy, unease, of being trivialized-and they go out and they try to do something," a seventeen-year-old, named Konstantin, told the site, explaining why he joined the demonstration.

In explaining Putin's consistently high approval ratings, many analysts and journalists point to the fact that more than eighty per cent of Russians receive their news from state-television broadcasts. Younger Russians, though, are less likely to pay attention to state-controlled TV, and it seems that the Kremlin has less certain tools for reaching this demographic, let alone shaping its political attitudes. Even LifeNews, a usually servile, pro-Kremlin tabloid site, has admitted this new reality. In an article published on Monday, called "Farewell, Television," a Life columnist acknowledged that "television, by focussing on the adult, even elderly, part of the population, completely missed the active and young audience." Sunday's protests, in the columnist's view, represented an "extremely disturbing and serious warning sign" for Kremlin officials. "Television has failed, and its inefficiency as a mass 'agitator and organizer' will only intensify."

Russia's young people can truly be called "Putin's" generation: those under twenty-five have no significant memories of any other Russian leader. Yet, as was the case during perestroika, in the nineteen-eighties, the authorities appear to have lost a certain sway over the country's youth, and no longer speak their language. Two weeks ago, a remarkable video of a meeting between a principal and high-school students in Bryansk, a provincial city some two hundred miles from Moscow, surfaced online, and was widely shared. The students had been hauled in for a lecture after one of them had urged his classmates to attend the local version of Navalny's anti-corruption protest.

The principal's tone is hectoring and frustrated. "What Navalny is doing is a pure provocation. Do you get it? You still don't understand this," she tells the students. They push back against her claims. One says, "We basically took it," referring to Crimea. Another tells her about evidence of Russian troops in eastern Ukraine: "There are videos going around-you have no idea." The argument goes in circles, with the principal trying to scare the students with talk of civil war and unrest, and the students answering her with talk of "justice," or what one describes as "when the authorities care about their people, and not just about themselves; when they care about ordinary citizens, and not about their millions of dollars." Losing her patience, the principal asks whether Putin and Medvedev have made life worse. No, a student answers, "but they've stayed too long." Neither side convinces the other, but it is the students who sound more confident and clearheaded in their arguments; the principal's voice is marked by a note of disorientation, the frustration of falling behind the times and no longer enjoying the easy authority she once had.

For the Kremlin, the geographic diversity of Sunday's protests was just as unsettling as their demographics. Gatherings of various sizes were held in nearly a hundred Russian cities, including places where demonstrations hadn't occurred five years ago, during the previous wave of anti-Kremlin protests. A couple of hundred people came out in Nizhny Tagil, an industrial stronghold in the Ural Mountains where, in 2011, factory workers had volunteered to travel to Moscow and, if necessary, use force against anti-Putin protesters. More than a hundred and fifty people were detained in Makhachkala, the capital of Dagestan, a republic in the North Caucasus where Putin got more than ninety per cent of the vote in 2012. It was clear that the Kremlin hadn't anticipated anti-government activity in such regions, and that it had failed to give clear instructions to local authorities. As a result, in some places, the protests went on unmolested; in others, they were broken up roughly, as in Omsk, where authorities had snowplows drive out the crowd in the city's central square.

The demonstrations were also tied up with Navalny's political ambitions. He has declared his intention to run for President next year, when Putin is up for reëlection, though Navalny faces a years-old fraud case, which, if the Kremlin decides to pursue it, could bar him from the ballot-the sort of legal gray zone in which the Kremlin likes to keep the country's opposition. Still, Sunday's demonstrations put the Kremlin somewhat on the defensive, or at least in search of a new public-facing message of the kind that gives authoritarian governments such as Putin's a sense of legitimacy.

Each of Putin's Presidential terms has been bolstered by a different narrative. His first term, which began in 2000, centered on restoring the authority of the state and bringing a basic sense of order and competency to the administration of government. His second term, from 2004 to 2008, was about the redistribution of the country's windfall oil-and-gas profits, fuelling a consumer boom and effectively buying the population's political disengagement. And since 2012, when he returned to the office of the President after a faux withdrawal from power as Prime Minister, Putin's rule has become defined by Russia's standoff with the West, played out in Ukraine and Syria, which is really about restoring Russia's self-image as a great power and an influential player on the world stage.

With elections a year away, it's unclear what argument or bargain Putin wants to make with the Russian people in his fourth, and presumably last, term. The patriotic boost that the annexation of Crimea provided is starting to fade. Russia's military operation in Syria is an even less potent propaganda tool. Putin and his political advisers don't have a coherent answer to the populist and non-ideological anti-corruption message offered by Navalny. That doesn't necessarily mean Navalny represents an actual danger to them at the ballot box. In 2013, Navalny lost the Moscow mayoral election, attracting twenty-seven per cent of the vote-an impressive number given the numerous disadvantages he faced, but perhaps a sign of his electoral ceiling. A recent poll by the Levada Center showed that the number of Russians ready to vote for him for President-which stood at thirty-three per cent in 2011-is now around ten per cent. In the end, Putin's near-total control over the country's electoral commissions, local legislatures, and court system at all levels means that his continued rule is likely to remain unchallenged.

Navalny's real talent is in revealing the system's weaknesses and blind spots, and in making it look awkward and unsure of itself. Last week, when unidentified pro-Kremlin activists threw green medical dye on him during a campaign rally, Navalny managed to turn his stained face into a popular meme. Sunday's demonstrations were a clear success, not least because the Kremlin was so unprepared for them. They have awakened a sense of possibility in Navalny's campaign, if it is allowed to proceed. On Monday, a Moscow court sentenced Navalny to fifteen days in jail for disobeying police orders-ostensibly a window the Kremlin wants to use to reassess its strategy toward Navalny and figure out what to do next. But, even if he figures out how to deal with Navalny, Putin will still face a trickier dilemma: How much longer will the cocktail of inertia, stability, and fear of the unknown keep him generally popular? And, if that political tincture loses its potency, what will his next offer to the Russian people entail? He may be able to delay answering those questions for some time, but not forever.

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What the Russian Protests Mean for Putin

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Sunday in Moscow was a bright spring day, chilly but clear, and by the time I made my way to Tverskaya Street, Moscow's main thoroughfare, the sidewalks were full of people strolling up, toward Pushkin Square, and down, toward Red Square and the red-brick towers of the Kremlin.

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On Sunday, March 26, around 90,000 Russians came out across the country to protest. The outpouring was a huge surprise, not just because of the large scale or because the rallies took place beyond traditional protest hubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Much more surprising was the fact that Russians showed up because of an anticorruption campaign. To be sure, Russians have long bemoaned graft. Yet most investigations inspire only a muted public response: "Yes, we knew. But what can we do?"

This time, however, corruption investigations have sparked something more: the largest response to an anticorruption campaign since President Vladimir Putin came to power almost two decades ago. The story begins on March 2, when the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), which is linked to the Russian opposition, released an exposé about Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev. The FBK revealed that Medvedev had amassed a fortune of 70 billion rubles ($1.2 billion)-a trifle more than what he could have saved from his official salary. FBK's video has since been seen over 15 million times and counting. Surely, there are many red faces in the Kremlin.

That stands in stark contrast to the visage of Alexei Navalny, Russia's main opposition figure, who was leading the investigation. Shortly after the exposé was released, he was splattered with green paint by a provocateur at a rally meant to kick off his 2018 presidential campaign in Russia's east. Realizing that the paint was not acidic or poison, Navalny soon turned the smear into an iconic moment on Instagram. Green faces went viral. One man wearing green face paint was arrested in Red Square for disturbing the peace.

Protesting in Russia has always been a bit risky. But for a while now, it has been almost entirely illegal. In late 2011, mass protests followed the rigged Duma elections. These were dubbed the Snow Revolution because the largest protests took place in the dead of winter. Fearful of his power slipping away, Putin went to work, making protest an even more complicated bureaucratic

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How Putin Will Respond to Russia's Protests

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On Sunday, March 26, around 90,000 Russians came out across the country to protest. The outpouring was a huge surprise, not just because of the large scale or because the rallies took place beyond traditional protest hubs in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Much more surprising was the fact that Russians showed up because of an anticorruption campaign.

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Posters on the streets outside described the plans to raise the pension age as "genocide". Inside parliament, barrel-chested communist deputies wore white T-shirts claiming their implacable opposition to the reform. And ordinary Russians had shown their disapproval, with a million of them putting their signatures to a petition.

In the end, the vote to pass the Kremlin's contentious pension bill in its second reading went without so much as a whimper.

The tightly controlled State Duma removed the last significant legislative hurdle by 326 to 59, with a proforma third reading scheduled for Thursday. Few will be on the edge of their seats by the time the Federation Council and the president are asked to add their seal of approval next Wednesday.

Wednesday's vote followed party lines. The ruling United Russia party voted for; the token opposition voted against. And when it came down to the presidential amendments, everyone was in favour. They were for the president, one deputy argued, but against his reform.

"There is something we can all agree on," the speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said once the unanimous vote passed.

Following the amendments, the pension age will eventually rise by five years, to 65 for men and 60 for women. Rarely has a government policy provoked such rage among Russians.

Opinion polls suggest eight out of 10 Russians are against the bill, and over half are ready to join protests. Opponents of the bill say it strikes at the heart of the country's social contract. In some regions, the proposals take the male pension age beyond the male life expectancy.

After the government first presented its plans in the summer, the ratings of both president and ruling United Russia party nosedived by 20 per cent. Performance in regional elections this month was also dire, with voters rejecting hand-picked candidates across the country. In a sign of the Kremlin's nervousness, opposition leader Alexei Navalny was twice arrested ahead of protests.

Authorities initially tried to keep the president above the fray. It was a matter for government, not the president, spokesperson Dmitry Peskov would tell journalists. But, eventually, Vladimir Putin was forced to intervene. On 29 August, he made a TV address to the nation, calling for a moderate softening of the bill but describing it as necessary medicine.

The Kremlin understood it would take a hit, said Tatyana Stanovaya, founder and CEO of the political analysis firm R.Politik, but it might have overestimated its reserves. And its tactics have contributed to a sense of the president being detached from his people.

"There is still a huge problem of dialogue," she told The Independent. "People are expressing anger at three things. First, they see international politics being handled with far greater urgency than internal economic problems. Second, they don't see any positive agenda, only warnings that if you don't support them, things will get worse. And third, they recoil at the language of ultimatum, the absence of discussion."

Sergei Kurginyan, head of the neo-Marxist movement that organised the million-strong referendum against the bill, said he was disappointed, but not surprised, by the outcome.

"Of course we didn't like the way that the deputies voted, but they are absurdly dependent and act like children around a father," he told The Independent. "They committed political suicide today, but they voted for that suicide because they are nothing without the president."

Mr Kurginyan said the vote would have broad consequences for the "political stability" of the country. There was a danger of late-Soviet collapse, he said: "There is already a slow, creeping process of disillusionment, but it will become more pronounced."

According to Ms Stanovaya, the Kremlin plans to manage the growing public discontent by renewing the regional elite with new faces. By evening, the president had already moved to replace two governors. But this "corporate" approach did nothing to solve the fundamental problems of "distrust in the system and in a president who has lost his magic wand".

Sooner or later, the Kremlin will be left with a choice, she said.

"They can either turn the screws further and risk creating a pressure-cooker environment. Or they can introduce moderate liberalisation, and risk things getting out of control."

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'They committed political suicide today' - Kremlin problems grow as Russian pension reform passes second reading

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Posters on the streets outside described the plans to raise the pension age as "genocide". Inside parliament, barrel-chested communist deputies wore white T-shirts claiming their implacable opposition to the reform. And ordinary Russians had shown their disapproval, with a million of them putting their signatures to a petition.

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Thousands of Russians are taking a bold stand against the Kremlin's efforts to block the popular encrypted messaging service, which refused to give the state access to users' messages. Published On Credit Credit Image by Alexander Nemenov/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

MOSCOW - A demonstration in Moscow against the Russian government's effort to block the messaging app Telegram quickly morphed on Monday into a protest against President Vladimir V. Putin, with thousands of participants chanting against the Kremlin's increasingly restrictive bent.

The key demand of the rally, with the hashtag #DigitalResistance, was that the Russian internet remain free from government censorship.

"Do you believe that Putin knows about blocking Telegram?" one speaker, Sergei Smirnov, editor in chief of Mediazona, an online news service, asked the crowd. "Is he to blame for blocking Telegram?"

The crowd responded with a resounding "Yes!" to both questions.

"Telegram is just the first step," Mr. Smirnov continued. "If they block Telegram, it will be worse later. They will block everything. They want to block our future and the future of our children."

The rally comes two weeks after Roskomnadzor, the official internet watchdog, began its bumbling effort to shut down Telegram by blocking what the regulator said was some 18 million I.P. addresses.

The F.S.B., the K.G.B.'s successor agency, went to court to obtain the order to block the app after Pavel V. Durov, Telegram's inventor, a Russian who lives in exile, declined to provide the security agency with the means to decrypt messages. The F.S.B. said it needed to be able to read the messages to thwart terrorist attacks.

The effort to close Telegram has knocked out countless other sites, including some top websites, like Yandex and Vkontakte, the Russian equivalents of Google and Facebook. Although the shutdowns were brief, those companies did not hide their pique.

"We do not consider this situation to be acceptable," Yandex said in a statement. "The Russian market can develop only in conditions of open competition."

The effort has provoked anger and frustration far beyond the habitual supporters of the political opposition, especially in the business sector, where the collateral damage continues to hurt the bottom line. There has been a flood of complaints on Twitter and elsewhere that the government "broke the internet."

"A large number of people are aware of the situation and they are not O.K. with it," said Nikita Likhachev, editor in chief of TJournal, an online publication covering internet culture, technology and politics.

With no public accountability, nobody has any real sense of the scope of the shutdown, he said. "The whole point about the internet being broken in Russia is that we don't know what is happening and whether it can be fixed at all," Mr. Likhachev said.

Countless people who play online games or use specialized services and tend to be apolitical, Mr. Likhachev said, have suddenly realized how much the government can affect their daily lives. "They have started asking questions about what is happening," he said.

At the rally, which was peaceful, one hand-painted sign reflected that mood: "Things are so bad that even introverts are here."

No arrests were reported.

The rally, organized by Russia's small Libertarian Party, had an official permit - often a sign that the government knows that a broad segment of the population is angry. The roster of speakers included opposition stalwarts like Aleksei A. Navalny, the anticorruption activist. He led chants of "Down with the Czar!" and called on people to continue to fight censorship at the May 5 rally he has called nationwide to protest Mr. Putin's inauguration for a fourth term.

Various speakers and demonstrators said they had never been to any public demonstration before.

Alexander Gornik, 34, a software entrepreneur, said many of the tools that his employees use for work, like Slack, Pipedrive and Tralier, were now inaccessible. To make high-quality software that can compete globally, Russia needs to be connected to the world, he said.

"This is not just about Telegram, it is an attempt to isolate the Russian segment of the internet," Mr. Gornik said.

Despite all the attention paid to Russian hacking and other expertise on the internet, the programmers at the government regulatory agency have not been capable of handling the complicated process of shutting down an app with international reach.

Mr. Durov, who left Russia after his previous creation, Vkontakte, was wrestled away from him in 2014, generated countless additional I.P. addresses to thwart efforts to block Telegram. Some 13 million Russians are among its 200 million users worldwide, and many in Russia can still access the site. Mr. Durov encouraged the demonstrators from afar with a series of posts on Vkontakte.

"Russia is at a crossroads - full-scale censorship has not yet been introduced," he wrote in one post. "If action is not taken, Russia will lose Telegram and other popular services."

Under sunny skies in the early afternoon, he posted again, writing: "Thousands of young and progressive people are at this moment speaking out in Moscow in defense of the internet. This is unprecedented."

In recent months, the Putin administration, particularly the Foreign Ministry, has repeatedly accused the West of "Russophobia" for sanctions and the general sour mood toward Russia.

One rally organizer turned that accusation on its head, telling the demonstrators that it was various politicians and bureaucrats who were shutting down the internet who were really afraid of the Russian people. He began shouting the names of some of them followed by "Russophobe," and the entire crowd chanted with him.

There was no immediate government reaction to the protest.

Many of the demonstrators carried paper airplanes, the symbol of Telegram, which whipped around above the heads of the crowd.

The turnout of many thousands was particularly notable in that Monday was the start of a weeklong holiday, when Muscovites depart the city in droves for the country or abroad. A second rally is planned for Tuesday in St. Petersburg.

Polina Oleinik, 17, and Polina Bulakh, 16, both students, said it was the first demonstration that they had ever attended.

"Young people between the ages of 15 and 30 are very upset about this," Ms. Oleinik said. "Russia must be a democratic country free of censorship. That is why we came."

Follow Neil MacFarquhar on Twitter: @NeilMacFarquhar.
Sophia Kishkovsky contributed reporting

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Protesting the Censors, and Putin: 'They Want to Block Our Future'. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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'They Want to Block Our Future': Thousands Protest Russia's Internet Censorship

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MOSCOW - A demonstration in Moscow against the Russian government's effort to block the messaging app Telegram quickly morphed on Monday into a protest against President Vladimir V. Putin, with thousands of participants chanting against the Kremlin's increasingly restrictive bent. The key demand of the rally, with the hashtag #DigitalResistance, was that the Russian internet remain free from government censorship.

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands protested in central Moscow on Sunday against a proposed increase to the retirement age and the crowd chanted slogans critical of President Vladimir Putin whose approval ratings have been dented by the bill.

The rally organized by the opposition Libertarian Party chanted "Putin is a thief" and "away with the tsar," slogans common at anti-Putin and anti-government protests.

The retirement age proposal is politically sensitive for Putin, who was re-elected in March, because it has prompted a series of protests across Russia since it was announced on June 14, the day Russia played the first match of its soccer World Cup.

Around 90 percent of the population oppose the bill, according to a recent opinion poll, and a petition against it has attracted 3 million signatures online.

More than 6,000 people came to Sunday's rally some 2.4 kilometers (1.5 miles) from the Kremlin, according to White Counter, an NGO that counts participants at rallies using metal detector frames. Police put the number at around 2,500.

People held placards with slogans against the higher retirement age and one read: "stop stealing our future". Authorities detained two protest organizers, Vladimir Milov, a former deputy energy minister and now an opposition campaigner, told Reuters.

The proposal to raise the retirement age, to 65 from 60 for men and to 63 from 55 for women, is part of an unpopular budget package designed to shore up government finances that is backed by lawmakers.

Putin, who once promised not to raise the retirement age, has tried to distance himself from the pension plan.

This month he said he did not like any of the proposals. He said Russia could avoid raising the retirement age for years, though a decision would have to be made eventually.

"We have to proceed not from emotions, but from the real assessment of economic conditions and prospects of its development and (the development of) the social sphere," Putin said.

On Saturday, more than 12 thousand rallied on the same street in Moscow, according to the White Counter data.

The changes to the retirement age would be introduced gradually, starting in 2019, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said when presenting the plan. Officials said the measure should help to raise an average pension in Russia, now at around 14,400 rubles ($229.52).

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monetary / fiscal policy / policy makers

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Protesters chant anti-Putin slogans at Moscow rally against...

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MOSCOW (Reuters) - Thousands protested in central Moscow on Sunday against a proposed increase to the retirement age and the crowd chanted slogans critical of President Vladimir Putin whose approval ratings have been dented by the bill. The rally organized by the opposition Libertarian Party chanted "Putin is a thief" and "away with the tsar," slogans common at anti-Putin and anti-government protests.