Russian police have detained over 4,300 demonstrators in a crackdown at protests across Russia on Sunday against Moscow’s ongoing full-scale military offensive in Ukraine that started on Feb. 24, Russia-based human rights monitoring group OVD-Info reported.
Russian Interior Ministry has justified the thousands of arrests with the fact that the protests were unauthorized.
Despite the massive crackdown on free speech that imposed restrictions on Facebook and Twitter in Russia and the new legislation that envisions imprisoning people for up to 15 years if they publish what information about Russia’s invasion that Moscow deems fake, Russian authorities have so far failed to stop the anti-war movement in the country.
Russian lawmakers passed on March 4 legislation criminalizing the Russian army’s defamation, the spreading of fake information, or calling for anti-Russian sanctions, justifying the law by accusing the US and the West of waging an information war against Moscow over the Ukraine conflict
OVID-Infor spokesperson Maria Kuznetsova stressed that they’re essentially witnessing military censorship in which the screws are being fully tightened which resulted in rather big protests even in Siberian cities.
The free speech crackdown has resulted in closing the local independent outlets and temporarily suspending operations in Russia by the Western media giants such as Bloomberg and the BBC.
According to freelance journalist Yana Pashaeva, who attended a protest in Moscow last week, demonstrators typically go out on a basically silent protest, not carrying banners or chanting due to the threat of arrest.
Regardless of the peaceful character of the protests, Moscow’s police deployed heavy forces to the city center, demanding crowds to disperse but in some cases, the situation spiraled into brief but intense scuffles on the sidelines of rallies.
According to Russian Interior Ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk, a total of 1,700 people were detained in Moscow alone with some 750 arrests made in St. Petersburg, where more than 1,500 people rallied and chanted anti-war slogans.
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