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“Forgive me for the poor quality, the lighting here is very poor,” said the woman quoted by meduza.io.
Several thousand supporters of the arrested opposition leader Alexei Navaln gathered in Moscow on Saturday to answer his call to protest against the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin across the country.
Despite the mobilization of police forces and previous arrests, the protesters gathered at Pushkin Square in central Moscow before staging planned marches towards the Kremlin, holding signs with the words “Russia will be free,” journalists said. to the AFP news agency.
Putin’s fiercest critic of Novičiok, who survived poisoning with a nerve-paralyzing substance, called for massive protests in the country after police detained him at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport after returning from Germany, where he was being treated. .
Saturday’s protests, planned in several dozen Russian cities, are expected to be a test for the opposition, which will have to mobilize its supporters despite mounting pressure from the Kremlin by its critics and the risk of a coronavirus pandemic. .
The first protests took place in cities in the Far East and Siberia, including Vladivostok, Khabarovsk and Chita, where a total of several thousand people gathered, Navalno supporters said.
OVD Info, which monitors arrests during opposition protests, said a total of 200 protesters were detained in Russian cities, including Moscow.
Russian authorities have promised to crack down, and police say unauthorized public events will be “immediately suppressed.”
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