War in Ukraine: Moscow hits hard on media and protesters – SME.sk

NEW YORK. Russian police detained more than 4,300 people on Sunday in anti-war protests in various cities in the country.

According to Reuters, this was stated by the independent OVD-Info monitoring group, which added that the protests against Russian invasion of Ukraine took place in 56 Russian cities.

Russia’s interior ministry said before that police had detained about 3,500 people, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St. Petersburg and 1,061 in other cities.

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According to the Ministry of the Interior, a total of 5,200 people took part in the protests.

However, OVD-Info said it had documented the detention of at least 4,366 people in 56 different cities in the Russian Federation.

Marija Kuznetsova, a spokeswoman for OVD-Info, pointed out that “today we are witnessing quite large protests, even in Siberian cities, where we have rarely seen so many arrests.”

Recent protests with a similar number of arrests in Russia took place in January 2021, when thousands of people demanded the release of opposition leader Alexei Navaľnéhowho was arrested by the police directly at the airport, immediately after his return from Germany, where he was being treated and recovering from novice class nerve poisoning.

Reuters added that some Russian state-controlled media reported briefly on Sunday’s protests on Sunday, but did not make them one of their news priorities.

Russia’s RIA news agency reported that Manezhnaya Square, located in central Moscow and not far from the Kremlin, had been “released” by police, who had arrested some participants in an unauthorized protest against the so-called special military operation in Ukraine – this is how the invasion of Russian forces into the territory of a neighboring state indicates the Russian political and military leadership.

The RIA also provided footage of Kremlin politicians driving cars in columns along the Moscow embankment with Russian flags. They had stickers on the cars with the letters “Z” and “V” – used by Russian forces as a distinguishing mark on tanks and armored vehicles operating in Ukraine.

World agencies said that anti-war protests took place again on Sunday in several cities around the world.

According to Reuters, they were joined by the largest city in Kazakhstan – Almaty, where about 2,000 people came to the anti-war meeting. Reuters noted that he had not been able to verify this information from social networks.

War in Ukraine