ST. PETERSBURG/YEKATERINBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2021) T. PETERST. PETERSBURG/YEKATERINBURG (Pakistan Point news / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2021) BURG/YEKATERINBURG, January 23 (ST. PETERSBURG/YEKATERINBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2021) putnik) - The number of people detained at unauthorized protests across Russia is on the rise ST. PETERSBURG/YEKATERINBURG (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd January, 2021) aturday as scuffles with law enforcement proliferate in major cities.
The police in Saint Petersburg detained several people at the Senate Square even before the rally was set to begin while in Ural capital Yekaterinburg, protesters pelted smoke flares at riot police which led to a forceful dispersion of the gathering.
Earlier in the day, the protesters were pushed out from the Senate Square by the police. According to a Sputnik correspondent, at approximately 11:20 GMT, the protesters returned to the square, surrounding the Bronze Horseman monument and chanting slogans. Before that, police officers were pelted with snowballs by the protesters.
Meanwhile, the security agency of the Sverdlovsk region told Sputnik that 14 people were detained during the demonstration in Yekaterinburg.
In addition, local authorities in the Siberian city of Irkutsk said that some 2,500 people joined an unauthorized rally there.
Protests began early Saturday in Far Eastern cities of Vladivostok and Khabarovsk and unfolded as the day progressed west, as opposition-minded citizens responded to jailed activist Alexey Navalny's call to take to the streets.
In the run-up to the protests, authorities urged citizens to refrain from attending the protests, as coronavirus restrictions prohibited public gatherings.
Meanwhile, some 30 participants of an unauthorized rally in the Russian city of Makhachkala, the capital of the southern Republic of Dagestan, have been detained by the police, the republic's interior ministry told Sputnik.
"An unauthorized rally took place at Makhachkala's Central Square, approximately 30 participants were delivered to police departments for identification. Almost everyone is already released. The event at the square is over," the ministry's spokesperson said.
Navalny was detained upon his arrival in Russia last week for violating probation terms on an earlier embezzlement conviction. The opposition figure and his associates begun calling for the Saturday protest after he was placed under 30-day custody. Authorities have tried to stem calls to join the protest on social media on grounds of illegal involvement of minors in protest activity and coronavirus violations.
