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Police have detained hundreds of protesters across Russia, including opposition leader Alexei Navalny, after thousands took to the streets to demonstrate against corruption and demand the resignation of Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
Key points:
- Protests take place across multiple Russian cities
- Authorities say Moscow protests an illegal provocation
- Alexei Navalny detained as he walked in central Moscow
The protests, believed to be the biggest since a wave of anti-Kremlin demonstrations in 2011 and 2012, come a year before a presidential election which Vladimir Putin is expected to contest, running for what would be a fourth term.
Opinion polls suggest the liberal opposition, which Mr Navalny represents, have little chance of fielding a candidate capable of unseating Mr Putin, who enjoys high ratings.
But Mr Navalny and his supporters hope to channel public discontent over official corruption to attract more support.
Reporters saw police detain Mr Navalny as he walked along central Moscow's Tverskaya Street with supporters, part of an unsanctioned rally as a police helicopter circled overhead.
Police put Mr Navalny in a truck which hundreds of protesters crowded around, trying to open its doors.
"I'm happy that so many people came out [onto the streets] from the east [of the country] to Moscow," Mr Navalny said, moments before he was detained.
The Kremlin said on Friday that plans for the central Moscow protest, which the city's authorities had rejected, were an illegal provocation.
Grigory Okhotin, one of the founders of OVD Info, a human rights organisation which monitors detentions, said about 600 people had been detained in Moscow on Sunday.
Police put number of detained at 500
Police said 7,000 to 8,000 people were on Tverskaya Street and surrounding areas by mid-afternoon and put the number of detentions by late afternoon at about 500.
As evening drew in, hundreds of riot police lined up on Manezh Square at the end of Tverskaya Street and drove protesters away from the Kremlin's walls. Some opposition supporters on Manezh Square shouted "Putin is a thief" as tourists wandered nearby.
Mr Navalny called the protests after publishing allegations that Mr Medvedev, the Prime Minister and former president, had amassed a huge fortune that far outstripped his official salary.
Mr Medvedev's spokeswoman called the allegations "propagandistic attacks" unworthy of detailed comment and said they amounted to pre-election posturing by Mr Navalny.
Elsewhere, at a rally in the far eastern city of Vladivostok, a Reuters reporter saw 30 people being detained after unfurling banners reading "The prime minister should answer".
"I've come out [to protest] against corruption and want the authorities to answer the accusations in the Navalny film," 17-year-old student Denis Korneev said at the Moscow protest.
"In many countries the government would have resigned over this."
Local media reported that large protests also took place in other cities, including St Petersburg and Novosibirsk. State media broadly ignored Sunday's protests.
Reuters
Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, activism-and-lobbying, government-and-politics, world-politics, russian-federation
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