Police detained more than 4,300 people on Sunday at Russia-wide protests against President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, according to an independent protest monitoring group.
Thousands of protesters chanted “No to war!” and “Shame on you!”, according to videos posted on social media by opposition activists and bloggers.
Dozens of protesters in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg were shown being detained. One protester there was shown being beaten on the ground by police in riot gear. A mural in the city showing Mr Putin was defaced.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage and photographs on social media. Russia’s interior ministry said earlier that police had detained about 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St Petersburg and 1,061 in other cities.
The interior ministry said 5,200 people had taken part in the protests. The OVD-Info protest monitoring group said it had documented the detention of at least 4,366 people in 56 different cities.
“The screws are being fully tightened – essentially we are witnessing military censorship,” Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info’s spokeswoman, said by telephone from Tbilisi.
“We are seeing rather big protests today, even in Siberian cities where we only rarely saw such numbers of arrests.”
The last Russian protests with a similar number of arrests were in January 2021, when thousands demanded the release of opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was arrested on returning from Germany where he had been recovering from a nerve agent poisoning.
Some Russian state-controlled media carried short reports about Sunday’s protests but they did not feature high in news bulletins.
Russia’s RIA news agency said the Manezhnaya Square in Moscow, adjoining the Kremlin, had been “liberated” by police, who had arrested some participants of an unsanctioned protest against the military operation in Ukraine.
RIA also showed footage of what appeared to be supporters of the Kremlin driving along the embankment in Moscow with Russian flags and displaying the “Z” and “V” markings used by Russian forces on tanks operating in Ukraine.
Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, said Russian values were being tested by the West, which offered only excessive consumption and the illusion of freedom.
Mr Navalny had called for protests on Sunday across Russia and the rest of the world against the invasion.
Off air
Separately, BBC World News has been taken off air in Russia, the broadcaster has said.
Russian authorities have been restricting access to foreign and independent media outlets, including the main BBC websites, in recent days as the invasion of Ukraine continues.
On Friday, its parliament approved a law making it a criminal offence punishable by up to 15 years in prison to spread “fake” or “false” news about the Kremlin’s war in Ukraine, prompting the BBC to temporarily suspend the work of all its news journalists and support staff in Russia.
BBC World News presenter Victoria Derbyshire was the first to announce the channel’s suspension. She told viewers shortly before midday on Sunday: “BBC World News, the channel you are watching if you are outside the UK right now, and which is the BBC’s global television news channel, has just been taken off air in Russia.”
A BBC spokesperson later said BBC World News had not been available in Russia since Saturday. The spokesperson added: “We regret that our Russian audiences are being denied access to trusted and impartial news at a time when they need it most.” – Reuters/PA