On a tactical level, you can't help but feel the organizers of today's protests in Moscow were trying to be a little bit too clever. Perhaps too much playing armchair general and trying just to outfox the authorities. Thread:

Instead of keeping police on their toes & guessing what will come next, the constant switching locations seemed to frustrate and confuse the protestors a lot more, sapping any chance of building momentum or getting people concentrated in one place as last week.

Police cars, armoured vehicles and commanders with a full surveillance suite and the ability to close roads and metro stations in seconds can get to new locations much quicker than protestors on foot - and that's assuming they all get the same message to move and act on it

It was never likely people would get close to the original symbolic choice of FSB headquarters, meaning they started the day on the back foot. Selecting it perhaps ensured an even more committed & sizeable response than a march around the garden ring would have, for instance.

Pushing protestors to go to Matrosskaya Tishina (the jail where Navalny is being held) seemed ambitious. It's 7km away from the original start place, a 2hr walk in the snow. It also put off some of the moderate protestors who knew they would be met by a heavy police presence.

That said, a not insignificant number of people clearly made the walk there, and 4+ hours after the intended start, this was the scene by Sokolniki metro station - the main road towards Matrosskaya Tishina

But overall, I think "new" protestors (for who today was their 1st or 2nd-time) were left overwhelmed, confused and constantly trying to catch up to some elusive main crowd or waiting for a place to gather. A few I spoke to said they felt much more vulnerable than last week.

Convincing new protesters to come out week after week - and getting them to bring new friends, family, colleagues with them - depends a lot on that immediate post-protest feeling. Last week it seemed jubilant, an exercise of civic rights, some power seized and momentum shifted.

This week it doesn't appear so clear-cut. Maybe if you were one of the hundreds marching to the prison. But for the much larger number who were running around Moscow trying to find new groups after getting a telegram message about another location switch, probably not.

Caveats: Personal opinions. Yes, I'm also playing armchair general. Thousands still came out. It's not all about Moscow. You can't judge one side's tactics in isolation (see @DrRadchenko thread for how the state has been clever in its preparations) https://twitter.com/DrRadchenko/status/1355864978591506432?s=20