Buryatia Mongols protest mayor and Putin

Protests against the election winner, Igor Shutenkov, accused of fraud. Arrests and clashes with the police. A shaman wants to go to Moscow to "drive" Putin out with special exorcisms.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - In Ulan-Ude, the capital of Buryatia, the republic of the Mongols in the Russian Federation, a protest rally is underway demanding new elections for the mayor of the city, and to support the initiative of a shaman who announced that he wanted to go to Moscow to "drive out" Putin with special exorcisms.

On the night of September 12, police forces stormed a bus on the square, where activists were spending the night. The protesters arrested could now be subjected to Article 318, with the crime of resisting a public official. According to the agency Taiga-info, the assault on the bus started around 2 am. From the videos of the protesters we see that the police used pepper spray on people. A girl who was recording on her phone, Selmeg Baldanova, after having lost consciousness, was dragged along by her feet, and suffered massive trauma from her head banging on the steps of the bus.

In all, 17 people were arrested, as reported by local communist MP Tumen Dondokov, among them there is also another deputy, Bair Tsyrenov. Police justified the action with the order to close the square, although the rally was authorized. Just during the protests, preparations began on the square for the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Mongol-Soviet armies on the Khalkhin-Gol river.

Dondokov and other deputies want to turn to the governor Vjaceslav Nagovitsyn, as guarantor of the constitution, and to the president of the People’s Khural (the local parliament) Vladimir Pavlov, for a parliamentary inquiry to be started. All the protesters, local communists, contest the results of the mayor's elections, in which Igor Shutenkov won, thanks to what they claim was repeated and sensational fraud.

In this way, the Russian Mongols join the demonstrators in Moscow and other cities, where protests focus on the local figures of mayors and governors, who are the most accessible terminals of the Putin regime.