Across Russia, protests were held against higher duties on imported cars, but the participants failed to get the decision cancelled. In different cities, rallies and car runs unfolded differently, in some places police and traffic officers restrained them, and in others they turned into political actions with slogans and demands to the authorities. Activity was especially notable in Vladivostok, Irkutsk, Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Blagoveshchensk, where protesters tried to draw attention to their position.

Thursday ended in nothing for the representatives and participants of the All-Russian action against the increase in duties on imported cars.
The wave of rallies held across Russia against the increase in car duties led to nothing.
As expected, residents of Primorsky Krai were the most active.
Motorists in Vladivostok, who gathered for a rally on the Ship Embankment, ignored the decision of the local authorities, which had not permitted the gathering. Nevertheless, despite the presence of police cordons, the meeting went peacefully and without incident. The protesters prepared an appeal to the prosecutor’s office, in which they demanded that a criminal case be opened against the persons who allowed and carried out the dispersal of demonstrators during the previous rally, held on December 21 last year.
In Irkutsk, a protest rally against the adoption of customs duties was held in the square near the Trud sports palace. About 100-120 protesters and about 150 police officers were present there. The protesters collected signatures for an appeal to President Medvedev, in which they asked him to cancel the increase in duties.
The car rally announced in Moscow turned out to be nominal, as it was disrupted by traffic police representatives. According to Alexey Dozorov, a representative of the Committee for the Protection of Motorists’ Rights, the authorities deployed more than ten traffic police cars to the starting point of the rally, which picked participants’ cars out of the traffic flow. As a result, instead of 20, only two or three cars took part in the rally. They circled the Garden Ring three times, after which they went their separate ways.
In St. Petersburg, all thirty people who gathered for a rally near the walls of the Sports and Concert Complex on Gagarin Avenue represented opposition political parties and movements. Thus, the motorists’ rally turned into a banal political show event with flags and slogans such as “Don’t tell us what to drive, and we won’t tell you where to go.”
In Blagoveshchensk, the protesters demanded Putin’s resignation and nearly came to blows with representatives of the United Russia party, who wanted to explain to their fellow townspeople the benefits embodied in the decree of the Government of the Russian Federation. “Most likely, these were the last convulsions, carefully planned by the dying networks of Avtoimport,” representatives of the United Russia party held this view.
In Yekaterinburg, the protesters hit the city streets with a car rally, frightening passersby with banners reading “Hands off Palestine!”.