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Over 4,600 people in cities across Russia were detained at protests on Sunday against Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine, a monitor said, on the 11th day of the invasion.
A police spokeswoman said 1,700 people were detained in Moscow after around 2,500 took part in an “unsanctioned protest”, while 750 were detained at a smaller rally of around 1,500 people in the second largest city of Saint Petersburg, Russian news agencies reported.
OVD-Info, which monitors detentions at opposition protests, put the figure of detainees in 65 towns and cities across Russia at 4,644 people.
It said police had used electric shockers on protesters.
It also posted witness photos and videos on Telegram messenger service showing riot police beating protesters with batons and demonstrators with blood running down their faces.
Memorial, Russia’s most prominent rights group, said that one of its leading activists, Oleg Orlov, was detained on the capital’s Manezhnaya square as he held a placard.
Svetlana Gannushkina, another veteran rights campaigner who has been tipped as a potential Nobel Prize winner, was detained in Moscow on the day of her 80th birthday.
A police van carrying a group of detainees to a police station overturned in a road traffic accident, injuring nine, six of them members of the public, city police said.
In the second largest city of Saint Petersburg, with large numbers of riot police patrolled outside Gostiny Dvor, a building in the city centre where protesters usually gather.
These protests came after hundreds were detained at demonstrations further east, such as in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk and in Yekaterinburg in the Urals.
Russian police on Friday had warned that all attempts to hold illegal demonstrations on Sunday would be “immediately suppressed” and organisers and participants would face charges.
The…
Source : france24
