Today's Kommersant publishes a fresh interview with Vladimir Putin, where the dictator comments on opposition rallies:
Look, all our opponents support a Rechtsstaat. What is a Rechtsstaat? It is obedience to the existing law. What does the existing law say about [Dissenters'] Marches? You need to get a permission from the authorities. Got it? Go and protest. Otherwise you don't have this right. If you go out without having the right, get beaned with a baton. That's it!
Putin manages to lie three times in this short passage:
1. Rechtsstaat ("правовое государство") is not just about obedience to every law. It is also about laws being fair, about everybody being equal before the law, about having independent judiciary system etc. Do we have anything of this? No. The government adopts any laws they want, including non-constitutional, they apply them discriminatively (e.g., United Russia has on many occasions organized rallies in violation of the law but nobody dared to "bean" them for that), and they control the courts, so that the protesters can't defend their rights there. So what kind of "obedience" can Putin demand from the opposition? I'm not even asking if Putin has heard about the term "civil disobedience" and that it is often used to effectively advance rule of law.
2. Even in Putin's law, there is no such thing as a "permission" to hold protests. The law on gatherings, meetings, demonstrations, marches and pickets, according to which all rallies are to be held, you only need to file a notice to local authorities that you are going to hold an action. Strategy 31 (which Putin most probably is referring to) makes it every time, complying with the law absolutely. And still, every time they get "beaned" by Putin's riot police. So who is violating the law?
3. The last, smaller but remarkable lie: Putin also "forgot" that his own law forbids to use batons and other "special means" to disperse peaceful rallies, and the new law on police will forbid to "bean" people, i.e. beat them on the head. The law rightfully calls it "cruel treatment" and it doesn't take a degree in law (which Putin kind of has) to understand why it is so. But if you yourself are a cruel person, this kind of treatment is just right: "That's it!"