The Kremlin’s Response to Moscow Protests Was Total Overkill. That Was the Point.

“This was not people protesting to bring down the regime,” notes Mark Galeotti, a Russia analyst at Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, who points out that the City Duma doesn’t actually have all that much power anyway. “It’s not the stuff of which revolutions are usually made." For Galeotti, the authorities’ “out of proportion” response “says something about decisions having been made in the Kremlin. This was definitely the state wanting to make a point.”