More than 400 people have been detained at events across 32 Russian cities since the death of Alexei Navalny, President Vladimir Putin's most formidable opponent, according to rights group OVD-Info, as Russians continued to gather and lay flowers.
It has been the largest wave of arrests at political events in Russia since September 2022, when more than 1,300 were arrested at demonstrations against a "partial mobilisation" of reservists for Putin's military campaign in Ukraine.
Navalny, a 47-year-old former lawyer, fell unconscious and died on February 16 after a walk at the "Polar Wolf" Arctic penal colony where he was serving a three-decade sentence, the prison service said. The death of Navalny robs the disparate Russian opposition of its most prominent leader as Putin prepares for the March presidential election—a rubber-stamp vote set to keep the former KGB spy in power until at least 2030.
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