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A website that collects information on arrests during political protests said 142 people were detained on Wednesday night. Many of them, including journalists, were put in police cars, AFP correspondents reported from the scene.
An AFP journalist was also briefly detained.
Moscow City Council deputy Julia Galiamina, who campaigned against Putin’s controversial constitutional amendments, said she and her daughter had also been arrested on Facebook.
Earlier on Wednesday, Galliamine and her allies gathered at Pushkin Square in central Moscow to collect signatures against the constitutional amendments passed this month to challenge them in court despite the rain.
“We are raising a collective case,” activist Andrei Pivovarov told AFP, collecting signatures on the steps of the statue of the national poet Alexander Pushkin.
“We collect signatures from across the country,” he added.
Russia without Putin
Later, on the social network Twitter, J. Galiamina wrote that 5,000. signatures “It’s a great result,” he said.
At one point, activists were forced to take a break because, they said, the newspaper quickly sold out.
Some protesters held up posters, others chanted “Russia without Putin” and “Russia will be free.”
Maria Aliochina, an activist who became famous with the Pussy Riot protest group, also called the amendments a “constitutional coup.”
Earlier this month, Putin, 67, oversaw a highly controversial seven-day vote on a constitutional amendment that would open him up to two more periods of six years when his current term expires in 2024. In this way, Putin could remain in office. power until 2036.
The amendments include populist measures, such as a provision that prohibits same-sex marriage in principle.
Renowned opposition politician Alexei Navaln has said that a “record of electoral fraud” has been achieved in this vote and that the result “has nothing to do with people’s views.”
Many people in Pushkin Square said Wednesday that they had come to protest the amendments.
“I voted against them,” 46-year-old accountant Ina Golovina told AFP. “People say the results were false.”
Pavel Tarasov, a young member of the Moscow City Council representing the Communist Party, said he wanted to help with his signature, but the crowd was too large.
“The results of the vote are not satisfactory,” he said.
Subsequently, a large group of mostly young activists broke up and walked the streets of central Moscow, but many were brutally detained.
Galliamine was arrested in Pushkin Square after the signing ceremony.
Pharaoh Putin
As many as 1,000 people had gathered for a similar event in St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, an AFP correspondent said.
“The government is doing what it wants, the people are not interested in anything,” complained Andrei Stepanov, 50. “We need to somehow show that we don’t agree.”
Anatoly Naidionov, 38, likened the Russian president to a “Pharaoh completely cut off from reality.”
“All this could end badly for the country,” he added.
Earlier on Wednesday, the lower house of parliament passed a controversial law in a major second reading that would allow elections for three days. The opposition says that the decision to allow elections for several days will complicate the work of observers and facilitate the falsification of the vote.
These amendments will allow voting not only in polling stations, but voters will be able to cast their votes in various “public places,” said the State Duma.
The bill was proposed in 2012 by the then President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev.
The law should be adopted in the third final reading on July 21.
During the plebiscite on constitutional amendments, which ran from June 25 to July 1, temporary electoral tables emerged, some of which were even installed in incredible places such as buses, tents or street benches.
The voting process, in which election observers were unable to participate properly, was derided on social media and criticized by opponents of the Kremlin.
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