Russian political opposition supporters planned to again take to Moscow’s streets on Saturday to protest for free elections in spite of being prohibited from holding such a rally.
Several individual protests were planned as opposition supporters press for their candidates to be allowed on the ballot for upcoming city council elections.
A protest in central Moscow last Saturday, the fourth in as many weeks, gathered tens of thousands of people.
Beginning as a sanctioned rally, the protest evolved into a march towards the Kremlin.
More than 100 people were detained at that protest, according to the independent monitoring group OVD-Info.
Police have been accused of taking a heavy-handed approach to conducting the detentions, tackling protesters and dragging them into buses.
At the two previous unsanctioned rallies, a total of more than 1,600 people were detained, according to official data.
