MOSCOW. May 9 (Interfax) - The president and the Cabinet must resign, the leader of the mainstream Communist Party's Moscow branch Alexander Kuvayev told an opposition rally on Lubyanskaya Square on Thursday.
Communist Party and People's Patriotic Front leader Gennady Zyuganov supported the demand that the Cabinet must go. The Cabinet acts as a colonial government, he said. Zyuganov called on Communist Party supporters "to boycott this executive authority" and fight to install a people's government.
Zyuganov listed the country's successes under Soviet rule and said that within the last 10 years, Nazi Germany's Barbarossa plan to dismember the country had materialized.
To the cheers of the crowd, he denounced the proposed legalization of land sales.
Russia will be able to restore its former grandeur when it reunites with fraternal Belarus and Ukraine under communist leadership, he said.
Former Defense Minister Igor Rodionov said the country has become a source of mineral resources for the West. There is a gap between the authorities and the people who are struggling for survival, he said. Russia and its people are victims of "a cruel and treacherous secret war" orchestrated by the United States, and Russia cannot win this war unless it is headed by a united front, he said. The People's Patriotic Front, which incorporates the Communist Party and other leftist movements, is this kind of organization, he said.
"When we get together, we will be able to form a people's government and decide in a referendum whether Russia needs presidential rule, imposed by the West," Rodionov said.
The police say that a crowd of tens of thousands attended the rally.