Police detain 200, including opposition figures, at Moscow forum

A rally in Moscow last month in support of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The detention of people at a meeting of independent and opposition politicians in the Russian capital yesterday comes amid a crackdown on anti-Kremlin sentiment
A rally in Moscow last month in support of Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny. The detention of people at a meeting of independent and opposition politicians in the Russian capital yesterday comes amid a crackdown on anti-Kremlin sentiment following Navalny's arrest and imprisonment. PHOTO: REUTERS

MOSCOW • Russian police detained around 200 people, including several prominent opposition figures, at a meeting of independent and opposition politicians in Moscow yesterday, the Interior Ministry said.

The detentions come amid a crackdown on anti-Kremlin sentiment following the arrest and imprisonment of opposition politician Alexei Navalny, who returned to Russia in January after recovering in Germany from nerve agent poisoning in Siberia.

The Moscow forum, scheduled for yesterday and today, was a gathering of municipal deputies from all over the country, Mr Andrei Pivovarov, the event's organiser and executive director of Open Russia, a British-based group founded by exiled former oil tycoon and Kremlin critic Mikhail Khodorkovsky, told radio station Echo Moskvy.

As the forum got under way, the police entered the building and began detaining attendees and taking them to police vans waiting outside, video footage from Russian news agencies showed.

The Moscow branch of Russia's Interior Ministry said around 200 people had been detained and that an investigation was under way.

The police said those detained were not following the appropriate anti-coronavirus health measures, even though the footage showed most of them wearing masks.

"Members of an organisation whose activities are considered undesirable on Russian territory were among the participants," the police added.

Russian independent human rights media project OVD-Info, which monitors the detention of political protesters and activists, put the number of detainees at more than 170.

"The finale of the short forum was very symbolic: deputies in police vans and masked police twisting people's arms," one detainee, opposition politician Ilya Yashin, wrote on Facebook. "But no one promised us freedom on a silver platter. Russia will still be free."

Open Russia is one of more than 30 groups that Moscow has labelled as undesirable and banned under a law adopted in 2015.

REUTERS

Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.

A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Sunday Times on March 14, 2021, with the headline Police detain 200, including opposition figures, at Moscow forum. Subscribe