Thousands of Russians turn out for anti-Putin protest Tens of thousands of Muscovites took to the streets on Saturday for the first mass protest rally against Vladimir Putin's regime since June, as the opposition knuckled down to prove its staying power in defiance of a crackdown on dissent. Police estimated the crowd that marched through Moscow's central boulevards to the protest rally on Sakharov street at 14,000, but witnesses estimated the number at about 50,000. The numbers were still less than the 100,000 or so that took part in the first protests this winter, but enough for opposition leaders to claim the street protests were still a force to be reckoned with. The speeches, however, took on a darker tone - with more demands for social justice - as leaders called for protesters to dig in for a long battle ahead. "There is not enough personal anger in this fight," roared Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption blogger who has become one of the opposition's most charismatic leaders. The other side knows that they stand to lose millions, their yachts and their houses on the Cote d'Azur . . . ve to see our fight for freedom and for equal rights as concrete things. The destruction of corruption means the country's riches for all of us and equal rights mean equality for all our children and not just cushy jobs for the children of the Kremlin elite . . . to work to feed our families. We have come out and demonstrate to ensure the future for ourselves and for our families. We have to come out as if we were going to work. The authorities "are trying to frighten us," he said. But we are never going to be frightened, and we are not going to forget and forgive. Russian opposition leaders have faced raids on their homes, criminal investigations and several arrests in a mounting crackdown since Mr Putin returned to the presidency for a third term in May. The three women member of the Russian punk band Pussy Riot have been jailed for two years for an anti Putin prayer performed in a Moscow cathedral, while on Friday, the pro Kremlin party dominated Russian parliament expelled Gennady Gudkov, an opposition leader, from its ranks in an unprecedented vote over claims he illegally engaged in business activities at the same time as serving as an MP. We have to come out to finish what we started twenty years ago Many attending on Saturday said the wave of repression had made them determined to keep protesting. If we don't continue there won't be any change. The more repression there is, the more often we need to come out," said Galina Sidorova, the head of a fund for investigative journalism attending the rally. This is the only way we have to express our position. "We have to come out to finish what we started twenty years ago at the White House," said Vladimir, a middle-aged entrepreneur who had been among those demonstrating in the early 1990s to help collapse the Communist party's grip on power. We never thought then that the Soviet Union would collapse either. Now we have to finish what we didn't manage to change then. Leaders called for demonstrators to help organise and agitate for a series of regional elections in October, the first test of the Kremlin's hold on power. The main protest calls continued to be for a rerun of parliamentary and presidential elections and political reforms. Rightwing leaders have also joined in demands for greater social justice such as a freeze on utility tariffs, wage increases for certain groups, as well as greater social spending for education and health and freedom for Russia's heavily Kremlin-controlled trade unions, as the opposition attempted to take its fight to what's been considered Mr Putin's traditional heartland, the working class. "We demand a huge increase in wages for teachers and doctors," said Boris Nemtsov, a so-called "liberal" leader who once served as deputy prime minister in Boris Yeltsin's government, and who recently published a report detailing the ornate palaces and other luxuries at Mr Putin's command. Putin wants to take 20m of our pension accounts to cover a hole in the budget. He would better sell his yachts and planes. Many of the speeches were much angrier than in the past. Sergei Udaltsov, the rake-thin leader of the Left Front movement, said he was now too angry to wear the white ribbon that demonstrators had pinned to their chests since the protest movement broke out last December, and would wear dark glasses instead as a "black sign to these swindlers and thieves." The summer has gone, three months since our last march. Not a single demand has been met . . . on the contrary repressions have only gathered pace, more people have been arrested," he said. Recalling a stunt Mr Putin made earlier this month when he flew a light aircraft to lead migrating cranes, he said, "the president has detached himself from reality. He flies with cranes and just spits on the people from above.