MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny and hundreds of anti-Kremlin activists were detained by police on Saturday during street protests against Vladimir Putin ahead of his inauguration for a fourth presidential term. Reuters reporters saw riot police systematically detaining other protesters in Moscow, some of them harshly, before bundling them into buses. Putin is due to be inaugurated on Monday in a Kremlin ceremony heavy on pomp and circumstance. However, European observers said there had been no real choice in the election, and complained of unfair pressure on critical voices. Critics like Navalny accuse Putin of overseeing a corrupt authoritarian system and of illegally annexing Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014, a move that isolated Russia internationally.

Source: Huffington Post May 05, 2018 12:22 UTC