MOSCOW: Police in Russia on Saturday detained over 1,000 people across the country at protests against President Vladimir Putin, the OVD-Info human rights monitor said.
Opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was himself detained, had called on Kremlin critics to take to the streets ahead of Putin's inauguration for a fourth presidential term to register their opposition to what Navalny says is Putin's autocratic tsar-like rule.
The monitor, OVD-Info, wrote on social media that it had received reports that at least 1,029 people had been detained in 19 different cities across the country.
It said 475 of the detentions had taken place in Moscow.