13 June, 2017
The center of the Moscow protest is at Pushkin Square - and while NPR's Mary Louise Kelly says the crowd there is huge, she adds that it's also hard to ascertain how many people are there for Navalny's cause, and how many for the national holiday. He was jailed for 15 days after the March protests.
As tens of thousands protest corruption throughout Russian Federation on Monday, prominent opposition figure Alexei Navalny is not among them. "He is in the department of the Interior Ministry in the Danilovsky district", Kobzev said, noting that Navalny is accused of a repeated administrative offence, which is punishable by up to 30 days of arrest or a fine of between 150,000 ($2,600) to 300,000 rubles ($5,300).
The activist's spokeswoman also confirmed that electricity had been cut at his office - temporarily disrupting an online feed of nationwide demonstrations.
At least 200 people are believed to have been detained in the anti-corruption protests across Russian Federation so far.
Unheeding to official warnings, Navalny insisted his supporters would turn out to protest like they did on March 26, when huge unauthorized opposition rallies led to the arrest of hundreds of people including Navalny himself.
Other images from the day show thousands of demonstrators in St. Petersburg chanting slogans against Putin - and black-clad police marching through the crowd, making arrests and pulling people off of monuments.
Police in the capital have put on gas masks and witnesses say pepper spray has been used against some protesters.
The leader had been given permission to hold a rally away from the city centre, but claimed Russian authorities had pressured companies into refusing to supply him with sound and video equipment.
Before the protest began on Tverskaya Street, a stone's throw away from the Kremlin, prosecutors warned the rally was illegal and police would take "all necessary measures" to prevent disorder. He's hoping to challenge Putin in next year's presidential election, delivering speeches around the country, as NPR's Lucian Kim reported last week. He asked me to convey that the plans do not change: "Tverskaya", she tweeted, referring to the street where the rally was to be held, coinciding with Russia's national holiday. In April, he suffered damage to one eye after an attacker doused his face with a green antiseptic liquid.
