Thousands of people held an unsanctioned vigil in Kemerovo where the fire killed 64 people

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Several Russian officials and pro-Kremlin commentators have accused the country’s opposition of trying to take advantage of a blaze at a shopping centre that killed dozens of people, most of them children.

The remarks came after thousands of people held an unsanctioned vigil in the Siberian city of Kemerovo, where Sunday’s fire killed 64, with many expressing anger over the government’s response to the tragedy.

“We have come to the conclusion that this was a clear, planned demonstration aimed at discrediting the government,” said Vladimir Chernov, a vice-governor of Kemerovo region, without offering any evidence for his claim. “Very many [of the demonstrators] were stoked up young people … people attended without understanding what they were doing there.”

In a similar move, Vladimir Putin’s leading political curator, Sergey Kirienko, warned political experts on Wednesday that “tragedies like these would be used for provocations”.

The Russian president arrived in Kemerovo on Tuesday to find anger at officials’ handling of the tragedy. Thousands of residents congregated in a central square in a rare public demonstration with some calling for him to come to address them, or for the resignation of the local government. Riot police were deployed around the local administration building.

On Wednesday a nationwide day of mourning was held for victims of the fire – the country’s deadliest since a blaze at a nightclub in 2009 that killed 156 – and the first funerals took place in Kemerovo. Among the first people buried were a grandmother and her two grandchildren – aged eight and 10 – who died in a locked cinema on the shopping centre’s top floor while watching cartoons. They were buried in the same grave.

Play Video Aerial view of deadly Siberian shopping mall fire - video

Moscow and St Petersburg also held unsanctioned vigils on Tuesday evening, attended by thousands.

The tragedy has led to a tacit tug-of-war between government and public initiatives. The mayor’s office hastily arranged a 5pm vigil by the Kremlin in Moscow after activists called mourners out to attend a 7pm memorial nearby.



Five people have been detained by investigators who said fire alarms at the mall were shut off and emergency exits locked. A Russian court on Wednesday arrested the manager of the shopping centre for two months. But it is unclear whether any regional officials will also be investigated.



In Kemerovo, several heated confrontations between locals and officials laid bare heightened tensions over the tragedy and a public distrust in information released by the government about the fire.

In one encounter, Sergey Tsivilyev, a vice-governor for the region, accused a protester of “making PR of the tragedy”. The protester, Igor Vostrikov, responded by saying he had lost three young children, his wife and sister, all of whom were trapped in the cinema.

Members of a “citizen’s action group” who met Putin said they believed hundreds had been killed in the fire, although the official death toll remained at 64.



Yelena Mizulina, a pro-Kremlin MP who helped introduce socially conservative legislation such as the country’s ban on gay propaganda, said she wanted to speak in support of Putin on a national TV programme on Tuesday evening.



“It’s a stab in the back, it’s a terrible shock,” said Mizulina. “What he’s doing today for Russia are incredible things, defending Russia in the international arena, carrying through reforms of unbelievable power internally.”



Vladimir Solovyov, one of the country’s most-watched television hosts, said during the same programme that “when the crowd demands blood and doesn’t care about facts ... Then that’s already not a government.”

Warnings about possible provocations from the opposition came just weeks after Putin overwhelmingly won re-election in the Kemerovo region with more than 85% of the vote.

While Putin remains popular across the country, the results of the election only reveal so much. Dissatisfaction over local issues, such as poor services or stagnant wages, remain higher and the Kremlin is concerned about local protests snowballing into larger movements.

In a video blog released on Wednesday evening, the Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny dived into the fray, saying that the death rate of seven of every 1,000 Russians killed by fire was a product of pervasive graft in the country’s firefighting services.

“These people in the Winter Cherry shopping centre were killed by corruption,” he wrote.