During events held in Russia over Friday and Saturday to commemorate Alexei Navalny, the prominent domestic opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin who passed away on Friday, at least 177 individuals were reportedly detained, according to rights group OVD-Info.
Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, tragically lost consciousness and died on Friday while at the “Polar Wolf” Arctic penal colony, where he was serving a three-decade sentence, as per authorities.
OVD-Info, an organization monitoring freedom of assembly in Russia, disclosed that more than 177 people in 21 cities across the country were apprehended during spontaneous rallies and vigils by 10:30 GMT on Saturday.
Specifically, 99 individuals were reportedly detained in St Petersburg and 11 in Moscow, the two largest cities in Russia, known for being the focal points of Navalny’s predominantly educated and urban supporters.
The rights group also documented individual arrests in smaller cities across the nation, ranging from Belgorod, a border city where seven people were killed in a Ukrainian missile strike on Thursday, to Vorkuta, an Arctic mining outpost with historical ties to the Stalin-era gulag labor camps.
“In each police department there may be more detainees than in the published lists,” OVD-Info said. “We publish only the names of those people about whom we have reliable knowledge and whose names we can publish.”
The count provided by OVD-Info has not been independently verified by Reuters.
In Moscow, the tributes of hundreds of flowers and candles laid on Friday to honor Navalny’s memory were reportedly removed overnight in black bags. Russians expressing their condolences conveyed feelings of despair and apathy following Navalny’s demise.
