ALEXEI NAVALNY & 200 HELD OVER ANTI-KREMLIN PROTESTS

JUNE 12, 2017LEAVE A COMMENTON ALEXEI NAVALNY & 200 HELD OVER ANTI-KREMLIN PROTESTS

Alexei Navalny, the critic of President Vladimir Putin, was detained.

He was on his way to a planned anti-Kremlin rally in the heart of the Russian capital.

A police cordon at Pushkinskaya Square in Moscow is blocking people from going to Tverskaya Street. They are being asked to proceed either to the metro station or neighboring streets.

Police are urging people not to disrupt public order or break the law

Opposition demonstrations have been held in major Russian cities, as the country marks its national day. The Moscow protest location was changed from the authorized Sakharova Street to an unauthorized location on the eve of the event.

At the unauthorized protest on Tverskaya Street, police have made some “selective detentions,” RIA Novosti reported, citing the head of Moscow’s regional security department, Vladimir Chernikov.

“Provocateurs” who had been shouting slogans, climbed street signs and “behaved inadequately in the crowd” were detained, Chernikov told RIA Novosti.

Several thousand people have taken part in authorized opposition rallies in the Urals region. The protests have been peaceful and with no incidents, local police say.

2,000 people took part in an authorized rally in Yekaterinburg. In Chelyabinsk Region, around 2,500 protesters participated in protests, police said, with several hundred people also protesting in Tyumen, Kurgan, Surgut, and Nizhnevartovsk, among other cities.

The sanctioned opposition protest on Sakharova Street in Moscow concluded without incident, according to the Moscow police press service. Around 1,800 people participated in the event, according to police estimates.

“Police and National Guard maintained public order and safety, no serious violations of the public order were registered,” the police said.

• A sanctioned opposition protest has finished in the central Russian city of Belgorod, TASS reports, citing regional police spokesman Aleksey Goncharuk.

  “Ninety-five people attended the meeting, according to official information. As the organizers said, the event happened within the sanctioned bounds,” the spokesman told TASS.
• Opposition protests sanctioned by the authorities have ended in the cities of Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk in the Ural region.

  “The events concluded without any incidents. No one was detained,” police spokeswoman Olga Abmaykina told Interfax-Ural news agency.
• The police are urging people to leave the site of the unsanctioned protest on Tverskaya Street in downtown Moscow and move towards Pushkinskaya Square.

  RT news