KHABAROVSK, Russia – Valentin Kvashnikov, a recovering construction worker and heroin addict, lives near the railway depot in a log cabin, with a plastic trash can in the corner that serves as a toilet.
But he has gone from obscurity to being a celebrity in the far east of Russia by helping to energize anti-government protests that have grown bigger and bolder in the past three weeks.
“Is he!” a passing woman, Natasha Gordiyenko, said after she saw Mr. Kvashnikov outside his home on Sunday, before unleashing a tirade of blasphemies against Russian officials.
The protests in Khabarovsk reached tens of thousands of people over the weekend, establishing this distant city, some 4,000 miles from Moscow, as the site of the greatest popular challenge to President Vladimir V. Putin’s authority that a city in the remote regions of Russia he has produced in his 20 years in power.
The protests have no leader and few concrete demands. But they have electrified a quiet city half the world from the capital, turning apolitical residents into activists overnight, and showing how quickly the coals of discontent over corruption, poverty, and absolute dominance of the Putin government can ignite a conflagration.
“It is not that there is something wrong with us,” said Elena Okhrimenko, a retired accountant, who has been protesting home signs along with her husband, a retired trucker. “We realized that there is something wrong in the country.”
Involving protesters from a wide cross-section of the city, an eight-hour flight from Moscow and just 15 miles from China, is a new kind of warning to the Kremlin. For years, large-scale protests have been largely confined to Moscow and St. Petersburg, making them easy to dismiss as the work of an out-of-touch urban elite.
However, the well of popular anger so far from the capital undermines the Kremlin narrative of Putin’s Russia, which has essentially ruled for the past two decades.
Putin won a heavily orchestrated referendum less than a month ago that rewrote the Constitution to allow him to remain in office until 2036. But many analysts called the vote fraudulent, and although pollsters have identified growing discontent among Russians in recent years, the Anger has never poured out onto the streets with such force outside of the country’s largest cities.
“For now, society doesn’t seem to be so radicalized as to storm the doors, so to speak,” said Tatiana Stanovaya, a nonresident academic at the Carnegie Moscow Center, a research organization focused on politics and politics. “But from my point of view, it is only a matter of time if the authorities cannot see what is really happening in the country.”
Mr. Kvashnikov, who for a long time fought poverty and complained about the injustice of the state, became a cheerleader for protesters who wore horns and marched through the city every day since July 11 in defense of their popular Governor Sergei I. Furgal, who was arrested. by federal authorities this month.
Protesters gather in Lenin Square in front of the marble-covered hull of the regional government headquarters, known locally as the White House, before hitting the road on a three-mile loop over the sprawling Amur River.
Cars honk, drivers offer those five crashes, and amazed viewers: the ice cream vendor, the cosmetics store security guard, the officer outside the railroad company building have their phones to record the scene.
“I never believed that our people were so close,” said Kvashnikov, describing the protests.
The protests have come from political rookies like Elena Skorodumova, a 23-year-old assistant kindergarten teacher. On July 9, she was scrolling through a social media page dedicated to local news and pets when she saw a post about the arrest of Mr. Furgal, the governor. In an elegant blue suit, Mr. Furgal was photographed being carried by a masked Federal Security Service officer in camouflage clothing, a gloved hand pressing on the governor’s head.
Ms. Skorodumova recalls that she got goose bumps from her anger. The “only way” to support the governor, she wrote in the comments, was “to go outside.”
The governor’s arrest, suspected of having staged murders some 15 years ago, seemed to many residents a blatant power play by the Kremlin to get rid of a regional leader seen as insufficiently loyal.
Furgal, a former junk dealer, defeated the incumbent, a very nasty ally of Mr. Putin, in the 2018 regional elections. Mr. Furgal then won over the residents in a populist style that his staff regularly documented on Instagram .
Officially fired by Mr. Putin last week, Mr. Furgal had highlighted how he saved millions of dollars for school lunches, cut his own salary, and put the governor’s yacht on the market.
More calls to protest his arrest ran through social media, often in the scrambled language of invitations for a walk or “feed the pigeons” in the central plaza.
On July 11, a Saturday, Ms. Skorodumova, the teacher’s assistant, packed disinfectant wipes and a toothbrush in case she was arrested and went to Lenin Square. She had never protested before.
Tens of thousands of his fellow residents also came. And they keep coming back.
Mr. Kvashnikov, the construction worker, found a source of people who shared his disdain for Mr. Putin and what he sees as a system that enriches the few. He barely has enough money to eat, he said, and had been involved in criminal groups and spent time in prison in a previous life.
“Rabid dog, why don’t you deal with what’s under your nose?” Mr. Putin said. “Your people are hungry. Look at how your people live.
Mr. Kvashnikov caught the attention of the many YouTubers who broadcast the protests live for his near-daily attendance, loud chants and his willingness to challenge the police. In a widely viewed video, he can be seen yelling at a police officer that the Russian Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly. The crowd next to him starts singing “We are the ones in charge here!”
The crowd of protesters has grown for three consecutive Saturdays, with some estimates putting last weekend’s crowd at more than 50,000, an outbreak of spontaneous political activism that is rare in Russia.
Alyona Panteleyeva, 22, and her mother run a small sewing workshop and fabric store. She said she had never been involved in politics until one of her employees suggested producing “I Am / We Are Furgal” face masks.
For the past week, the workshop has been producing around 50 masks a day, and Panteleyeva said she was selling them at a cost on Instagram and in her store. The first person to buy one, he said, paid in cash marked with a pro-furgal slogan; such bills are increasingly in circulation in the city, he explained.
“I am sure the protests will continue until citizens get what they want,” including a public trial for Mr. Furgal in Khabarovsk, rather than in Moscow, she said. “We are fighting for the truth.”
Mr. Furgal’s popularity as a regional elected official is unique, so Khabarovsk’s protests are unlikely to be repeated elsewhere, social scientist Sergei Belanovsky recently wrote. But they show a greater willingness to protest in response to any number of snubs.
“Given the generally unfavorable economic and social situation, the reasons for protesting continue to grow in number,” Belanovsky said. “The fabric of the state has thinned, and tearing it requires less and less effort.”
Putin remains in control of the country’s powerful security services and, although declining, his approval rating is 60 percent. An important question is to what extent the Kremlin will be prepared to use force to quell the protests: it has done so in Moscow but not yet in Khabarovsk. At one point Monday, a single police officer followed the column of about 1,000 protesters, apparently to keep the cars at bay.
Many protesters assume that some police sympathize with them. Analysts also say the Kremlin appears to be waiting for the protests to fade on their own, and the state media has largely ignored them. Meanwhile, authorities appear to be putting pressure on some activists.
On Sunday night in Lenin Square, the videos showed Mr. Kvashnikov haranguing a man in civilian clothes who he said had threatened him, and then other people in civilian clothes pushed him to the ground; He was carried by the ankles, chest and elbows to a waiting police car.
Hours later, the authorities released Mr. Kvashnikov. The video waiting bloggers were there to record their walk from the police station. Mr. Kvashnikov had already told his fans that he was taking a break from protesting, for the safety of his family.
“Don’t be afraid and keep it up, folks,” Kvashnikov said in a video message recorded on Sunday. “Most importantly, don’t give up on what we started together.”
Oleg Matsnev contributed to the Moscow investigation.
