Day of protest against vote fraud begins in Russia

Russians angered by allegedly fraudulent parliamentary elections and the country's ruling party took part in protests Saturday in cities from the freezing Pacific Coast to the southwest, eight time zones away  a striking show of indignation that poses a challenge to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's hold on power.            

The protesters are both angered by reports of flagrant vote fraud in the Dec. 4 election and energized by the sense that the elections showed Putin and his United Russia party to be newly vulnerable. The party held an overwhelming two-thirds of the seats in the previous parliament, but its share plunged by about 20 percent in the recent vote.               

 That result was a significant loss of face for the party that has dominated Russian politics, and protesters say that even its reduced performance was inflated by ballot-box stuffing.               
"The falsifications that authorities are doing today have turned the country into a big theater, with clowns like in a circus," said Alexander Trofimov, one of the early arrivals for the protest at Bolotnaya Square, on an island in the Moscow River adjacent to the Kremlin.           

Others say the elections were just the catalyst for them to show their anger over many issues.            

If Saturday's protests are a success, the activists then face the challenge of long-term strategy. Even though U.S. Sen. John McCain recently tweeted to Putin that "the Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you," things in Russia are not that simple.