MOSCOW—Tens of thousands are expected at rallies across Russia on Saturday to protest alleged vote-rigging in what looks to be the most direct challenge to the Kremlin's control since Vladimir Putin came to power 12 years ago.
As authorities scramble to blunt the impact of what could be the largest mass protests since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unexpected wave of popular discontent that has swept Moscow and several other major cities since the Dec. 4 parliamentary elections is exposing cracks in the Kremlin's once-carefully stage-managed political system.
A growing number of prominent members of the so-called systemic opposition—the tame parties that carefully muted their criticism of the Kremlin in return for seats in parliament, airtime on state television and other perks of power—said they planned to attend the protest in Moscow. Just a week ago, such participation in a public protest with leaders of the "nonsystemic" opposition—the outspoken Kremlin critics frozen out of the political process—would have been unthinkable, members of the parliamentary parties said.
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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204319004577088484276889386.htmlPutin is of course, former Leader of the FSB, (once KGB) the Soviet Secret Police, and was in power during the cataclysmic years of Globalist sponsored terrorism in Moscow and Chechnya.