MOSCOW — Russian police detained opposition activists on Friday and warned they would break up any illegal rallies this weekend after an opposition coalition angered by last week’s parliamentary election urged voters to gather in Moscow. The Moscow mayor’s office said the Communist Party event had not been authorized because of COVID-19 and police said unauthorized street events would be a breach of public order and immediately broken up. But Gennady Zyuganov, head of the Communist Party, told the RIA news agency that the event was entirely legal. Police detained or tried to detain at least six people on Friday over Monday’s event and called at the homes of others, the OVD-Info protest monitoring group said. Marina Litvinovich, one of the candidates in the opposition coalition, told Reuters they would hold similar protest gatherings across the country depending on turnout in Moscow on Saturday.

Source: National Post September 24, 2021 16:07 UTC