Russian paratroopers violently attack lone gay rights activist in St Petersburg

[another_liberal]

2. If you watch the video a little more closely . . .

The gay rights activist is the red-haired young man in in the black leather jacket, correct. If so, though he is obviously threatened and pushed around by these stripe-shirted, "Spetnaz" thugs, he is not the one on whom the blows are really rained down. If you watch the video a little more closely, you will notice the young man is hurried off to safety in a police car, while the thugs are the ones who get the real beatings by the police, who can be distinguished by the green camouflage uniforms they wear. Several of the abusive Spetnaz types are later seem being forcibly loaded onto a police bus, clearly to take them "downtown" for booking on various charges.

From an historical point of view it is also poignant that this all appears to take place in the square in front of the Winter Palace, on the very pavement where hundreds of starving protesters were shot down by Czarist troops in a massacre which began the 1905 revolution.