"Down With The Tsar!": The Kremlin Panics Over The Protest
- 6.10.2026, 14:39
Putin is afraid of even the most insignificant communists.
A telling incident took place in the capital of the aggressor country, one that perfectly illustrates the extent of panic and paranoia in the Kremlin. Zyuganov’s Communist Party has been kissing the Kremlin’s boots for years, voting for all the draconian laws and supporting the war against Ukraine. But as soon as these “puppet Reds” took to the streets for a pre-approved rally in central Moscow, it became clear: the state-controlled circus no longer guarantees protection from the punitive forces.
Formally, the CPRF rally in Moscow drew about two thousand people. However, instead of the sterile Soviet mustiness, slogans suddenly rang out over the crowd—slogans that gave the bunker dictator a nervous tic. Young people began shouting, “Down with the tsar!” and “No to political repression,” and demanded freedom for political prisoners.
The regime’s reaction was immediate and reflexive: OMON officers were sent into the crowd and began violently detaining the protesters. The result: more than 65 people were detained.
When one woman tried to stand up for a young man, the security forces barked, “Get out of here.” These are the largest mass detentions at CPRF rallies since the start of the full-scale invasion.
Hawks Who Couldn’t Be Saved by Police Vans
The absurdity of the situation lies in the fact that the Communists took to the streets with banners calling for the “crushing of Ukrainian Nazism,” trying to portray themselves as even bigger hawks than Putin. But Putin’s system couldn’t care less about your posturing if you took to the streets without the city government’s authorization. If you demand freedom—even in a whisper—you’re automatically an enemy.
Propaganda outlets like TASS or Solovyov and Skabeeva’s show didn’t say a word about these detentions. The regime is terrified of showing that anyone in the capital dares to shout “Down with the Tsar!” at all.
Investigations prove that the Communist Party of the Russian Federation (CPRF) and other “opposition” parties have for years been funded from the same source as “United Russia”—through the NGO “Mitakom.” Putin himself pays to create a fake opposition and allocates seats for it in the State Duma. But when rank-and-file supporters of these pseudo-parties take to the streets, the National Guard and the FSB instantly pounce on them.
A Parade of Cowardice Across Russia
Panic has gripped other regions as well. Protests against election fraud were planned in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Perm, Izhevsk, and Tyumen. And what did the “self-assured” authorities do? They staged a parade of cowardice, rejecting applications under the pretext of “COVID restrictions”—restrictions they only bring up when they need to ban an anti-government gathering.
The only place where a mass demonstration took place was Syktyvkar, where a hundred people took to the streets against the Kremlin. In other cities, security forces detained Russians even for solitary pickets.
Russians themselves complain in surveys that they are tired of the war, but when asked about rallies, they display textbook cowardice: “We’d go if it were absolutely safe.”
And they themselves are to blame for the fact that protests in Russia are impossible. Because for years, Russians have tolerated the murders of their neighbors and resigned themselves to each instance of vote-rigging. They didn’t take to the streets when opposition figures were thrown in jail or killed. Society is capable of little more than whispering in kitchens, hoping that someone else will overthrow the regime for them.
A Fragile Regime on the Brink of Explosion
The Kremlin’s own behavior is the most telling sign. Putin is afraid of his own shadow. He is in a panic, fearing a repeat of Prigozhin’s rebellion or simultaneous regional protests, when there simply won’t be enough security forces to cover all the cities.
The regime is so fragile that even the shouts of a few young people are enough to prompt the blocking of entire neighborhoods and the deployment of police vans. The repressive measures have hit rock bottom: OMON officers are now beating even those who support the war with batons. And when internal stability is cracking at the seams, the dictator has only one argument left—to intensify the terror against Ukraine in order to paint a virtual “victory” for his own intimidated people.
Anastasia Noritsina, “Channel 24”