MOSCOW — Around 2,500 people were detained
Sunday at protests against Moscow's military operation in
Ukraine, Russian
police said, 11 days after the assault began.
اضافة اعلان
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 49 towns and cities across
Russia at 2,575 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 center 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 organizers and participants would face charges.
The latest detentions brought the total
number of demonstrators held to more than 10,000 since February 24, when
President Vladimir Putin ordered troops into Ukraine to carry out a
"special operation".
Despite the official crackdown on
demonstrations, and protesters facing jail terms, there have been daily
protests since then.
On Friday, jailed Kremlin critic
Alexei Navalny urged supporters to stage protests on Sunday "on all the central
squares of Russia and all the world".
He has called for Russians to hold daily
protests, saying they should not become a "nation of frightened
cowards".
Putin on Friday signed into law a bill introducing
jail terms of up to 15 years for publishing "fake news" about the
Russian army.
Police in the Kemerovo region in the
Urals fined a man 60,000 rubles ($624) for calling for people to demonstrate against
the "special operation to demilitarize Ukraine", state news agency
RIA Novosti reported, saying this was the first known use of the new
legislation.
Read more Region and World
.jpg)
.jpg)
