In Moscow, Lubyanka Square is blocked due to the Memorial event.

In Moscow, police blocked Lubyanka Square and the passages to the Solovetsky Stone, reported the Center for the Protection of Human Rights (CHRD) Memorial (created by employees of Memorial, which was included in the register of foreign agents and was liquidated). Today, October 29, the Memorial Society is holding the annual “Return of Names” event on the eve of the Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression.

“For the first time, perhaps, when we came to the Solovetsky Stone, we saw that the square was cordoned off. Today this is the attitude towards the memory of the victims of repression. Not to gather for more than three – it looks like a mockery of the memory of the victims,” said the chairman of the board of the Memorial Center for Human Rights, Jan Rachinsky, during an online broadcast of laying flowers at the Solovetsky Stone.

Dozens of people took part in the action, among them the co-chairman of Memorial Oleg Orlov, as well as employees of the embassies of Austria, Belgium, Great Britain, the USA, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland and France. “There are two paddy wagons, two police cars on the square, police officers will let people through the frames, and only three people at a time,” the center’s message on the Telegram channel says.

“Return of Names” is a civil action in memory of the victims of political repression of the Soviet era, which has been taking place since 2007. In 2020, 2021 and 2022, the Moscow mayor’s office prohibited the Memorial society from holding an action due to Covid restrictions.

Polina Motyzlevskaya