What We Know So Far
- Opposition leader Alexey Navalny was detained by Russian police Tuesday evening, shortly after breaking house arrest to join protesters in central Moscow.
- Hundreds of protesters gathered in Manezh Square in bitterly cold temperatures, with police making many arrests.
- Demonstrators were angry that a Moscow court sent Navalny's brother Oleg to jail for three-and-a-half years on trumped-up fraud charges. Navalny himself was given a suspended sentence for the same amount of time.
- About 20 people were arrested, including Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina, the Guardian reported.
Updates
Pussy Riot member Maria Alyokhina was arrested along with about 20 other activists in Moscow in the overnight protests, the Guardian reported.
The Guardian reported:
A small group of activists including Alyokhina, and the anti-Putin blogger Arseny Bobrovsky, took refuge in a giant Christmas ball on Moscow's Manezh Square, directly in front of the Kremlin. Despite freezing conditions they spent the night inside. They held up banners saying that they would "occupy the globe" until Oleg Navalny was freed.At 8am Moscow time, the police moved in and arrested those inside. "They came from two directions, took everyone's documents, and then literally used their arms to drag us out," Alyokhina told the news portal Mediazona. . She added: "I consider all those who came out and spent the night in the ball to be heroes. It was -20C."
Wall Street Journal reporter Aleksander Kolyandr has now been released from police detention.
More photos have emerged of the moment Navalny was detained by officers and placed in a police van.
More than 130 people have been arrested so far in Tuesday's unsanctioned protest, according to the independent news site OVDInfo.org
Kolyandr had just contributed to a report for the Wall Street Journal on the re-arrest of Alexey Navalny.
Journalist Olaf Koens said on Twitter that the Wall Street Journal's repoprter Alexander Kolyandr was among those detained by police.
Journalist Olaf Koens said on Twitter that the Wall Street Journal's repoprter Alexander Kolyandr was among those detained by police.
Several more people were filmed being arrested and detained in police vans.
Police sources have told the Russian news agency Interfax that they are driving Navalny home, after he violated his house arrest to attend the anti-government protests.
Another former Russian political prisoner and prominent Putin critic, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, tweeted his support to Navalny:
"There's no point talking about the law when there isn't a legitimate Duma [Russian Parliament], there isn't an independent court. It's right that it's the time to simply act. Alexey made a moral choice," Khodorkovsky wrote.
Khodorkovsky has been based in Zurich, Switzerland, since he was released from prison last year.