MOSCOW — Ignoring pleas from the Kremlin for calm after more than a week of unrest, protesters in the Russian Far East on Saturday staged their biggest display of defiance yet, with tens of thousands of people pouring into the streets to protest the arrest of a popular regional governor. Russian news media reported that 50,000 or more people had joined a rally in the capital of Khabarovsk Krai, a sprawling territory nearly 4,000 miles east of Moscow. Thousands more attended protests in other regional towns and in Vladivostok, a port city on the Pacific Ocean in neighboring Primorsky Krai. The government in Khabarovsk, the regional capital, said in a statement that only 10,000 people had gathered “at the beginning” but gave no figure for the overall turnout. Police officers in Khabarovsk made no effort to stop what the authorities described as an “illegal” but peaceful protest and instead handed out face masks.

Source: New York Times July 18, 2020 16:41 UTC