As of January 2013, interviews by Ellen Barry of The New York Times of working class elements which had supported the protests revealed an atmosphere of intimidation, discouragement, and alienation.

According to RIA Novosti, there were more than 1,100 official reports of election irregularities across the country, including allegations of vote fraud, obstruction of observers and illegal campaigning.

The Yabloko and LDPR parties reported that some of their observers had been banned from witnessing the sealing of the ballot boxes and from gathering video footage, and some were groundlessly expelled from polling stations.

According to The New York Times, the leading element has consisted of young urban professionals, the well-educated and successful working or middle-class people[28] such as workers in social media.

[29] These groups had benefited from substantial growth in the Russian economy until the 2008 economic crisis but have been alienated by increasing political corruption as well as recent stagnation in their income.

[54] Prior to the demonstration, threats were made by Putin that police and security forces would be deployed to deal with anyone participating in illegal protests in Moscow or other cities; however, the event, when it took place, was peaceful and without attempts by the state to prevent or disrupt it.

Russia's chief public health official, Gennady Onishchenko, warned on Friday that protesters risked respiratory infections such as the flu or SARS.

Students in Moscow were ordered to report Saturday during the time scheduled for the demonstration to an exam followed by a special class[57] conducted by headmasters regarding "rules of safe behavior in the city."

[16] The Moscow demonstration was generally peaceful ending in the afternoon with the singing of Viktor Tsoi's song "Peremen" meaning "Changes", a perestroika anthem from the 1980s.

[62][63] Smaller protests were reported in Tomsk,[1] Omsk,[64] Arkhangelsk, Murmansk,[64] Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Krasnoyarsk, Kurgan,[64] Perm, Karelia,[65] Khabarovsk,[citation needed] Kazan[66] and Nizhny Novgorod.

[83] Gennady Zyuganov, head of the party and its candidate for President of Russia, has denounced election regularities but has also expressed his opposition to the organizers of the mass demonstrations who he views as ultra liberals who are exploiting unrest.

[91] Alexei Navalny, greeted with a ovation when he finally spoke,[89] said there were enough people present at the protest to march to and overrun the Kremlin, but that they were committed to remaining peaceful, at least for the moment.

[89] Speakers have been arranged by Alexey Navalny, Garry Kasparov, Boris Nemtsov, and Vladimir Tor, based on the principle of representation of different political forces.

[citation needed] Among the speakers were Yevgeniya Chirikova, Gennady Gudkov, Leonid Parfyonov, Olga Romanova, Vladimir Ryzhkov, Sergei Udaltsov, Ilya Yashin and Grigory Yavlinsky.

A couple of thousand protestors stayed behind and clashed with riot police who moved in to disperse them, leading to several hundred arrests, including Alexey Navalny, Sergey Udaltsov and Ilya Yashin.

[115] The activists from Moscow found it difficult to gain traction over the issue with local residents who, like most Russians, accept political corruption as a given that is useless to protest.

Even before the march, many large liberal media sites: Echo Moscow radio station, Kommersant daily, and TV Rain channel, were subjected to DDoS-attacks.

[151] Opposition groups disputed these figures "as grossly inflated", and some journalists, including one of the state-owned news agency RIA Novosti, said the real number was "much lower".

Some such claims made in the course of the protest organization were later refuted as falsifications by the opposition activists[9] and many other demonstrators said they came on their own free will according to a pro-government news site politonline.ru.

[154] Vladimir Putin, who earlier in the evening claimed to share the ideals of those who would go to Poklonnaya Hill,[157] offered to pay part of the fine with his own money.

The call for fair elections was supported, but the leaders of protesters on Bolotnaya Square and Sakharov Avenue were condemned as "successors to those who destroyed the country in 1991 and 1917"[9] and who allegedly want "to remove not Putin, but the Russian state".

[185] Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said that Hillary Clinton "set the tone for some opposition activists" to act "in accordance with a well-known scenario and in their own mercenary political interests <...> our people do not want the situation in Russia to develop like it was in Kyrgyzstan or not so long ago in Ukraine.

"[190] Vladislav Surkov, political adviser to the Kremlin and Chief of Russian Presidential Administration, who had been developing strategies for Russia to cope with an uprising such as the Orange Revolution in Ukraine has recognized the vital nature of the demonstrators but hopes to head off development of a potentially revolutionary movement by instituting reforms such as those announced by Russian President Dmitri A. Medvedev in his state of the nation address made 21 December 2011.

[191][193] Jay Carney, President Barack Obama's second White House Press Secretary, said that anti-government protests in Russia are a "positive sign" for democracy in the country.

He criticized Vladimir Putin and the United Russia political party for violating peoples human rights and for not ruling the country in a proper Democratic fashion.

'"[30] According to Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times columnist this humiliation of the rising middle class is the common ground the Russian movement shares with the Arab Spring.

A second is a phenomenon seen in Gen. Augusto Pinochet's Chile, that economic growth can inadvertently undermine autocratic rule by creating an urban professional class that clamors for new political rights.

[197] He told The Guardian, "We have only to reflect on the events in countries swept up in the Arab Spring to recognise the transformation taking place in the compact between the rulers and the ruled.

The Telegraph pointed out that since Mironov is a former ally of Vladimir Putin, he could have been trying to scaremonger "as a subtle way of endorsing a crackdown on street demonstrations that are expected in the days after the vote".

[201] On 11 June 2012, the day before a scheduled protest in Moscow the homes of the prominent activists, Kseniya Sobchak, Aleksei Navalny, Sergei Udaltsov and others were raided and extensively searched.