MOSCOW: Several people have been detained outside the Russian parliament at an impromptu protest against a controversial plan to tear down Soviet-era apartment blocks and relocate 1.6 million people.
The State Duma is expected on Wednesday to adopt the third and final hearing of a bill that would allow Moscow City Hall to pull down entire neighborhoods, involving more than 4,500 blocks.
The redevelopment project, arguably Russia's largest, has rattled many in Moscow who see the plans as an encroachment on their constitutional rights and a ruse to evict them from leafy neighborhoods to high-rise ones on the city's outskirts.
Several dozen were rallying outside the Duma on Wednesday morning, chanting "For shame!" Police snatched several people from the crowd and took them to a police van.