Demonstratie in Kaliningrad tegen Poetin 'geïnspireerd' door nabijheid EU (en)
The leader of the largest anti-government protest in Russia for almost a decade has said that his region's proximity to EU countries is producing an appetite for political change.
Between 7,000 and 12,000 people held a rally in Kaliningrad on Saturday (30 January) in a demonstration that initially targeted local tax hikes but which ended in calls for more democracy and for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to resign.
"We don't get our knowledge about the world here from state television, like people in provincial Russia, but from what we see when we visit our neighbours," the protest organiser, Maxim Doroshok, told Polish daily Gazeta Wyborcza.
"We see that in neighbouring Poland, where they brought in reforms, where there is democracy, it's cheaper, people earn more, civic bodies function better. Are we any worse? Our enclave is the most European in the whole [Russian] federation because we know Europe and we know how to fight for our rights."
Mr Doroshok, a 40-year-old electrician and the leader of the Solidarnost movement (Russian for "Solidarity," named after the Polish Solidarnosc), highlighted the similarities between himself and Lech Walesa, a shipyard worker from Gdansk in Poland who in the 1980s led the Solidarnosc trade union in opposition against his country's Communist regime.
"There is a different spirit at rule here. There is a wind blowing from your Gdansk," he said.
The weekend protest in the Kalinigrad exclave, a piece of Russian territory sandwiched between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea, was the largest anti-government demonstration in the country since 2001.
The province, which is home to around 1 million people and a large military base, has been touted by Moscow as a model for potential EU-Russia integration, but suffers from poor living standards and high levels of tuberculosis and HIV.
Mr Putin in 2005 abolished elections for the post of Kaliningrad governor and installed a loyalist - lighting components millionaire Georgy Boos - to rule as governor, amid fears that the region was drifting away from central control.
Small-scale anti-government protests also took place across Russia over the weekend, with gaggles of demonstrators at Moscow metro stations, in St Petersburg and in Vladivostock also calling for reforms.
The main rally, in Moscow, saw police detain 100 out of the 300 or so protestors, newswires report, with senior opposition leader, Boris Nemstov, among those placed under arrest.