“We know no mercy and do not ask for any.” So goes the motto of the Russian Interior Ministry's elite riot police, the legendary OMON, and so it must have seemed to opposition demonstrators in Nizhny Novgorod on March 24, 2007. Russia's third-largest city, 250 miles or so east of Moscow, had been chosen as the site for one in a series of “Dissenters' Marches,” in which those unhappy with Vladimir Putin's growing, self-confident, but repressive Russia would express themselves. Faced with some 20,000 OMON and other troops brought into the city under a plan code-named Operation Fortress, fewer than twenty protesters actually made it to Gorky Square, where they had planned to gather. Those that did make it, and some innocent pensioners passing by, were thoroughly beaten for their trouble. How many had attempted to march is unknown, since police across Russia had worked hard the week before to round up opposition activists and anyone else they thought might attend.

A riot policeman's lot is a varied one in Russia, however, and the next day some 3,000 OMONovtsy were gathered in Moscow to provide security for a march of a different sort.