The Other Russia opposition movement held a demonstration in St. Petersburg on March 18 to protest the official results of the city’s legislative assembly elections as well as Gazprom City, the controversial planned business center that will include the headquarters of Gazpromneft, the gas monopoly’s oil subsidiary, and a 77-story skyscraper. RFE/RL’s Russian Service (http://www.svobodanews.ru) reported on March 18 that more than a thousand people took part in the protest, which was sanctioned by the city authorities, and that Other Russia members were joined by members of Yabloko, the Red Youth Avant-Garde, Communists of Leningrad, and other groups, who demanded the resignations of President Putin and St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matvienko. The website described the security measures taken for the protest as “truly unprecedented,” with a number of OMON riot police even greater than those deployed for the “March of the Discontented,” which was held in St. Petersburg on March 3 without the city authorities’ permission. “OMON, brought in from other regions (in particular, from Nizhny Novgorod and even North Ossetia), cordoned off everything possible,” svobodanews.ru reported. “All entrances and approaches were blocked with cars, vehicular traffic was paralyzed.” The website reported that the protest was relatively incident-free, with only five members of the National Bolshevik Party and two Social Democratic Youth Union activists detained. Source: www.rferl.org See http://community.livejournal.com/rsdsm/10642.html for the story of Alexey Karpov of the Social Democratic Youth Union. See also http://www.spb.yabloko.ru/nsp/game/ to play the Yabloko game that protests the building of the Gazprom skyscraper in the centre of St. Petersburg SOURCE: European Forum for Democracy and Solidarity http://www.europeanforum.net/news/366