St. Petersburg’s city government approved on Monday a demonstration on February 4 to demand a fair presidential vote.
The authorities approved the opposition’s request to gather up to 30,000 people for a march in the city center, said Maxim Reznik, a deputy with the liberal Yabloko party in St. Petersburg’s parliament.
Allegations of vote rigging in favor of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party at last month’s parliamentary elections sparked the biggest anti-government protests in Russia in decades.
Putin, widely seen as the favorite in the March 4 presidential vote, has himself called for fair and transparent elections, and is overseeing a plan to install web cameras at all of Russia’s polling stations to prevent fraud.
Earlier, Moscow authorities gave the go-ahead to a 50,000-strong march through part of the city on February 4, declared by opposition leaders as a nationwide day of protest.
