January 20, 2012 - 18:50 AMT
Moscow rally to gather 50,000 on Feb 4

The Moscow authorities have received a request from Russian nationalist movements to authorize a rally for 50,000 people in central Moscow on February 4, a deputy mayor of the Russian capital said.

Russian opposition movements are planning other large-scale rallies in Moscow on February 4, following last month’s protests against alleged vote fraud in Russian parliamentary elections.

Deputy Mayor Alexander Gorbenko said the nationalists proposed five different routes for a march through downtown Moscow.

“We are going to offer an alternative site to organizers. Most likely it will be Lyublino,” Gorbenko said, referring to a working-class neighborhood on the outskirts of Moscow. “We will also propose cutting the number of participants to 10,000,” he said.

Last month rallies against suspected vote fraud on behalf of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia at the December 4 parliamentary polls have attracted a bewildering range of disparate opposition groups, including extreme-right movements that have seen members jailed for race-hate attacks, RIA Novosti reported.