Hundreds of people have
been detained in Russia on the day of a “revolution” announced by a popular
nationalist blogger.
Moscow police said they had
detained 263 participants of an unauthorised rally on Sunday. OVD Info, a group
that monitors arrests, later said at least 376 people had been detained in
Moscow and 36 in other cities.
On Sunday afternoon, riot police
had begun searching people near the Kremlin and putting many of them into
police vans, although none of them were shouting slogans or holding signs.
State news agency TASS reported that authorities had confiscated guns, knives,
brass knuckles and clubs from some of those detained.
Photographs and video shared on
social media showed that many of those arrested were teenagers and
20-somethings. One was seen playing Pokemon Go in a police van.
Vyacheslav Maltsev, a nationalist
YouTube blogger and former member of the Saratov regional parliament, has long
declared that a revolution against Vladimir Putin would start on November 5
2017. Mr Maltsev fled abroad after a criminal case for extremism was opened
against him in July, and his Artpodgotovka (“Artillery bombardment”) movement
was declared an extremist organisation last month.
On Friday, the Federal Security
Service said it had detained members of a “conspiratorial cell” Mr Maltsev's
Artpodgotovka movement in the Moscow region who were planning to set government
buildings on fire and attack police. Mr Maltsev said on Saturday more than a hundred
of his followers had been rounded up around Russia.
Also on Saturday, dozens of
participants in the Russian March, an annual nationalist gathering, were
detained in several cities.
Police detain a man in Moscow on
Sunday, the day that YouTube blogger Vyacheslav Maltsev had said a revolution
would start.
Tensions have been high ahead of the
centennial of the Bolshevik revolution on Tuesday, which the Kremlin has tried
play down but which the communist party plans to celebrate.
Several of those detained on Sunday
later told local media they were not followers of Mr Maltsev. Among them were
volunteers for Alexei Navalny, the opposition leader who has been holding
campaign rallies around Russia despite being barred from running in the March
presidential election.
Several libertarians who had been attending a reading of
texts by economist Adam Smith were also arrested.
Some of those detained said they were
being charged with refusing to obey a police officer, while others were
reportedly charged with assaulting police.
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