Twenty activists including a member of the Pussy Riot group were arrested in Moscow on Wednesday, after staging an all-night protest against the conviction of the Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg.
Several thousand anti-Putin demonstrators gathered in central Moscow on Tuesday after a court handed Mr Navalny - Vladimir Putin’s most high-profile opponent - a suspended sentence, but jailed his brother Oleg for three-and-a-half years.
Mr Navalny broke a house arrest order to attend the rally and was swiftly detained. Riot police arrested more than 100 people including Masha Alyokhina of Pussy Riot.
A small group of activists including Ms Alyokhina, and the anti-Putin blogger Arseny Bobrovsky, took refuge in a giant Christmas ball on Moscow's Manezh Square, directly in front of the Kremlin. Despite freezing conditions they spent the night inside.
They held up banners saying that they would "occupy the globe" until Oleg Navalny was freed. At 8am Moscow time, the police moved in and arrested those inside.
“They came from two directions, took everyone’s documents, and then literally used their arms to drag us out,” Ms Alyokhina told the news portal Mediazona.
She added: “I consider all those who came out and spent the night in the ball to be heroes. It was -20C.”
Mr Bobrovsky - whose spoof Vladimir Putin account @KermlinRussia has more than a million followers - sent a series of tweets from inside a police van. One showed a view of the Kremlin through bars and read: "Now I know how to view power in our country correctly".
Another added: "The riot police tells us we're being paid by the United States. Facepalm".
Police took the protesters in two vans to Moscow’s Luzhniki police station. According to Mr Bobrovsky, Ms Alyokhina demanded her passport back.
Other arrested activists included Maria Baranova, Polina Nemerovskaya and German Petukhov. On Tuesday, Ms Aloykhina and other members of Pussy Riot released a new video urging protesters to support the Navalny protest.
Critics say the case against the Navalny brothers was politically motivated. On Wednesday, Navalny was back in his Moscow flat. Five police guards were posted outside to stop him from leaving.
Mr Navalny tweeted that they had declined his offer of coffee and tea. He also noted that his popular blog may have been hacked. It was unclear whether Navalny will now face a similar jail term to his brother after deliberately breaking his bail conditions.
He is under house arrest following a previous conviction. Mr Navalny’s supporters said that Tuesday’s verdict showed the Kremlin was returning to the sinister Soviet-era practice of punishing the relatives of those it disliked.
Guardian Service