Opposition leader Navalny not to take part in nationalist Russian March

(Interfax – Moscow, November 2, 2013) Opposition activist Aleksey Navalnyy will not take part in the “Russian March” in Moscow on 4 November, he wrote in his LiveJournal (blog).

“I still support the ‘Russian March’ as an idea and an event, I am willing to give it information support and or some other support, but in the new situation I cannot participate myself,” Navalnyy wrote.

He said that since the Moscow mayoral election (in which he won 27 per cent of the vote according to official figures, finishing second behind Kremlin-backed incumbent Sergey Sobyanin) he feels a great burden of responsibility and has to maintain the political balance which enabled him and his supporters to gain a good result.

“My participation in the ‘Russian March’ would now turn into a hell of comedy: like Boniface (character in a popular Russian cartoon, a lion) surrounded by children, I would walk in a crowd of 140 photographers and cameramen trying to make a picture of me against the background of schoolchildren making Nazi salutes,” the opposition activist wrote.

Head of the regional security department (of the Moscow city government) Aleksey Mayorov told Interfax earlier that the event under the title “Russian March” had been agreed for 15,000 participants. (Passage omitted: reported earlier)