On Wednesday, hundreds protested and dozens were arrested over a protest in Moscow against constitutional reforms that give President Vladimir Putin the power to stay in power for additional 16 years, witnesses, and a monitoring group said.
Around 500 protestors chanted asking Putin to resign, held banners against the reforms, and wore face masks with the word “no” written on them.
After protestors marched down one of the Moscow city’s main boulevards, police officers in riot gear started making arrests late in the evening.
According to the rights monitoring group OVD-info, the police detained over a hundred people.
There has been no confirmation on the numbers of arrests from the police or the government.
Russian opposition activists state the vote on the reform as illegitimate and call on President Putin, who has stayed in power for over two decades as president or prime minister, to resign.
Although mass gatherings in Moscow are banned because of the coronavirus restrictions, even on normal days, demonstrations of more than one person require the Russian authorities’ advance consent.