Last night I got my first opportunity to cover a news event in a foriegn city. When Katia, one of the people helping me with interpretation, called the Youth Yabloko group to see if they were having any upcoming meetings they told her that there was a meeting on Wednesday night. I guess something got lost in the translation becuase I was expecting a meeting and what I got was a “radical action”.

Youth Yabloko is the youth wing of the Yabloko political party. They are one of the liberal parties in opposition to Putin and the Kremlin. The youth section is headed by Ilia Yashin and Alexander Shurshiv. When Sergey and I arrived at the party headquarters we were greeted in the parking lot by Yashin. Right off I knew we had walked into something bigger than a party meeting. There were several other photographers and television crews there.

Yashin explained that there would be a short press conference then we would be bussed to the location of the “radical action” as he termed it. The press conference consisted of Yashin making claims against Putin’s government—basically calling Putin a dictator.

Once we got to the destination which was Sophiyskaya Embankment on the Moscow River across from the Kremlin we could see what Yashin and Shurshiv had in mind for the evening’s press event. They were going to light themselves on fire to underscore their claim “dictators burn in hell”. They were wearing protective fire suits so there was a level of safety. As they burned they held up a banner that read “No Successor or Burn In Hell”.

All in all not bad for my first international event.

Here is video of the event from one of the local TV stations.