Over 2,500 detained at anti-war protests in Russia: Monitoring group
Zee News
Blue and yellow balloons were placed in the hand of a statue of Lenin towering over the small square where the rally took place.
More than 2,500 people were detained at protests on Sunday in 49 cities across Russia against President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine, according to an independent Russian-based 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. The OVD-Info protest monitoring group said 2,502 people had been arrested.
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 President Vladimir Putin was defaced.
Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage and photographs on social media, or to reach Russia`s interior ministry for comment.
"The screws are being fully tightened - essentially we are witnessing military censorship," Maria Kuznetsova, OVD-Info`s spokeswoman, told Reuters by telephone from Tbilisi. "We are seeing rather big protests today, even in Siberian cities where we only rarely saw such numbers of arrests."
