Dozens of opposition activists who attempted to stage rallies against the parliamentary elections were arrested in Moscow and St. Petersburg Sunday evening.
“Elections without opposition is a crime!” one activist shouted as several riot police wearing helmets dragged him into one of about 20 paddy wagons parked at Moscow’s central Triumfalnaya Square, a trademark venue for opposition rallies, early evening Sunday.
A group of several dozen activists, mainly young men, chanted “Shame! Shame!,” lit several flares and tossed around opposition leaflets at the same time.
Police swooped onto the crowd of about 300 protesters at the square and detained 100 of them, according to the Moscow police. Earlier in the afternoon, police reported that 12 more opposition activists had been detained for attempting to stage public protests in Moscow.
Seventy protesters were detained in St. Petersburg, according to the local police.
Russians voted Sunday to elect the State Duma, the lower chamber of the parliament, in what was widely regarded as test of trust into the Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. The party has nominated him as the presidential candidate for March, 2012 vote.
Radical opposition has decried the elections as illegitimate because several attempts of opposition parties to get legally registered and thus become eligible to run in the parliamentary elections had been nixed by the authorities.
Major squares in downtown Moscow were sealed of by police Sunday afternoon. Dozens of police buses and paddy wagons are parked around the Kremlin.
Over 50,000 police are on guard in the Russian capital on election day, more than double the number in Moscow during the previous Duma vote in 2007.
