Oppo supporters held ahead of anti-Putin rally

MOSCOW: Several supporters of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny have been detained across the country ahead of a rally to protest Vladimir Putin’s swearing-in for a fourth Kremlin term, monitors said on Friday.

Navalny, who was barred from challenging Putin in the March presidential election, has called on supporters to gather in central Moscow and other cities on Saturday, two days ahead of Putin’s inauguration.

Ahead of the rallies, several members of his team across Russia have been detained, said OVD-Info, an independent monitoring group. Activists were detained in Saint Petersburg, the Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk, the southern city of Krasnodar and in Tambov some 460 kilometres south of Moscow.

In Ryazan in western Russia an activist was illegally held by police for five hours over the distribution of leaflets ahead of the rally, the monitoring group said. "Craven old man Putin thinks he is a tsar," Navalny said on Twitter. "But he is not our tsar so take to the streets on May 5." In Moscow, Saint Petersburg and a number of other cities authorities have not granted permission for the staging of the opposition rallies.

Observers have expressed fears that the demonstrations could lead to clashes with police and mass arrests after similar protests in 2012 led to a huge crackdown on the protest movement.