US and UK condemn 'harsh tactics' as thousands of Alexei Navalny supporters arrested amid mass protests
Some protesters approached the prison in Moscow where Mr Navalny is being held, while others demonstrated in -50C temperatures.
Sunday 24 January 2021 07:00, UK
The US and UK have condemned the "harsh tactics" used against protesters and journalists in Russia - as more than 3,000 people have reportedly been arrested at rallies in support of the jailed Putin critic Alexei Navalny.
"We call on Russian authorities to release all those detained for exercising their universal rights," said US State Department spokesman Ned Price on Saturday.
Britain's Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab also condemned "the Russian authorities' use of violence against peaceful protesters and journalists" and called on its government to "release citizens detained during peaceful demonstrations".
Mr Navalny's wife, Yulia Navalnaya, was briefly held at a rally in Moscow - the location for one of up to 70 marches this weekend - where more than 500 people were detained, according to independent reports.
Mrs Navalnaya has now been released, according to Russian agency Interfax.
The gatherings, which police have declared illegal, are the first by Mr Navalny's supporters since he was arrested last weekend on his return to Moscow, after spending five months in Germany recovering from novichok poisoning.
In response to the arrests at the rallies, the British government has urged Russia to respect international human rights commitments.
"We are deeply concerned by the detention of peaceful protesters and continue to monitor the situation closely," the UK's foreign ministry said in a statement.
More than 3,000 people have been detained across Russia because of the protests, according to monitoring group OVD-INFO, which says it is the largest number of detentions the organisation has ever recorded.
Monitors from Amnesty International decried "the viciousness of the police response" to protests against Mr Navalny's "politically-motivated detention".
It comes after thousands took part in rallies and marches in Yekaterinburg, Irkutsk, Izhevsk, Nizhny Novgorod, Arkhangelsk and other cities in Russia's east, where, it is claimed, protests were the biggest for some years.
Among these was one in Yakutsk, where people gathered to demonstrate in -50C (-58F) temperatures.
And thousands more took to the streets of the capital Moscow and St Petersburg, where images showed huge crowds moving though the streets and OVD reported 200 detentions.
Videos from upwards of a dozen cities showed scuffles and people being dragged away by police, while others were hit with batons - including some in Moscow - or left injured on the ground.
One group of Mr Navalny's supporters reached the Matrosskaya Tishina prison where the opposition figure is being held. Some were detained by the police.
One video, apparently filmed in Moscow, showed an ally of Mr Navalny, the lawyer Lyubov Sobol, being grabbed by police and dragged away while taking part in a TV interview.
Ms Sobol was later charged with repeat violation of the rules on protesting, according to Interfax.
The Sky News team in Pushkinskaya Square, Moscow, said it saw at least 50 people carried away, apparently at random.
At least 40,000 gathered in the capital, Reuters estimated. Authorities claimed some 4,000 people showed up.
Sky producer Anastasia Leonova said many in the crowd shouted "Navalny", "Putin should leave" and "Shame on you".
She said people of all ages took part, including students and school children, with the oldest probably in their 70s.
Many of those driving past, including those in new or expensive cars, beeped their horns in solidarity with those protesting on the streets, Leonova added.
One man, Vina Lapkis, a 30-year-old Russian who has lived in the US, told Sky News: "We're out here because we love our country and we hate the illegal ridiculous stuff that's going on here.
"We don't agree with killing people, we don't agree with arresting people just because you don't like their political views. We don't agree with using police as a force to fight your own people and we hope that if we fight long enough we're going to win some day."
Another, Moscow lawyer Bilal Khotkin, added: "In Russia, we don't have any possibility to show the government what we want. We want change, because Putin is more than 20 years and it's a big period. We have big corruption, Putin is head of corruption.
"I want to show the world we maybe have a lot of problems. I'm here with this crowd and I want to show the world we want to change the situation."
There have also been reports that mobile phone and internet services in Russia have suffered outages as police crack down on anti-Kremlin protesters.
Authorities sometimes interfere with communication networks to make it harder for protesters to get in touch with each other and the wider world online.
Dozens of journalists have been held across Russia, according to reports, and protests also took place outside Russia in Sweden, Finland, the UK and other countries.
Mr Navalny, 44, who is one of President Vladimir Putin's most outspoken critics, blames Moscow for the attack that nearly killed him, although the Kremlin denies any involvement.
He is charged with breaking his bail conditions - and is facing a potential three-and-a half-year jail term if found guilty.
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Anyone who takes part faces charges of rioting, fines, problems at work, prison and even threats over child custody as the Russian state tries to crack down on the demonstrations, which could be the largest against Mr Putin since 2018.
Officials also enforced a crackdown in the run-up to the demonstrations, arresting members of Mr Navalny's team, including his spokeswoman Kira Yarmysh.
They launched an investigation after young Navalny supporters flooded TikTok with anti-Putin videos, pushing for people to support the action this weekend and using the using the hashtags #freenavalny and #23Jan.
The content has been viewed more than 300 million times.
Anger mounted against Mr Putin this week after Mr Navalny's team released a documentary exposing a vast and opulent palace built by Russia's leader on the Black Sea coast.
The programme claims the complex - 39 times larger than Monaco - cost £1bn to build and was funded through illicit money.
It is said to have a casino, an underground ice hockey complex and a vineyard.
More than 73 million people have now viewed the Russian-language video on YouTube, which has English subtitles, within three days of it being published.
On Friday, ahead of the weekend of planned protests, Mr Navalny issued a statement saying he wanted it known that he had no plans to take his own life in prison.
The arrest of Mr Navalny has attracted widespread criticism from Western leaders, sparking new tensions in the already strained relationship with the US.
Despite the plans for the protests, Mr Putin's grip on power appears solid, with the 68-year-old regularly recording approval ratings of more than 60%, many times higher than those of Mr Navalny.
