Russian police wrestled opposition leader Alexei Navalny into a patrol wagon on Sunday, moments after he appeared at a rally to urge voters to boycott what he said would be a rigged presidential election in March.
The numbers who showed up at protests across Russia on Sunday were lower than previous demonstrations Mr. Navalny had staged, according to estimates, indicating that the momentum may have shifted away from him.
Video footage posted on social media showed Mr. Navalny appear on Moscow’s main thoroughfare, Tverskaya Street, a few hundred metres from the Kremlin, to join several hundred supporters taking part in the protest, which the authorities had said was illegal.
He had only walked a short distance when he was surrounded by helmet-clad police officers. They grabbed him and forced him to the ground on the pavement, and then dragged him into the patrol wagon.
Mr. Navalny’s personal Twitter feed carried a post to his followers saying that he had been detained. “That does not matter. Come to Tverskaya. You’re not coming out for me, but for your future,” it said.
He was taken to a police precinct in central Moscow, Mr. Navalny’s Internet site reported. Police said in a statement that he would be charged with violating laws on holding demonstrations. The maximum penalty he faces for the offence is 30 days in jail.
Mr. Navalny emerged as a threat to the Kremlin’s tight grip on power on June 12 last year, when thousands of his followers defied police prohibitions to protest in cities across Russia. The scale of the protests, some of the biggest in six years, took the Kremlin by surprise.
On Sunday, several hundred people gathered in Moscow’s central Pushkin square, ignoring police appeals over a loud-hailer for them to disperse. Hundreds of people also protested in St. Petersburg, in Yekaterinburg in the Ural mountains, and other major centres.
By 15.00 Moscow time (12.00 GMT), police had detained 180 protesters nationwide, according to OVD-Info, a non-governmental group that tracks the arrests.
Earlier on Sunday, police forced their way into Mr. Navalny’s Moscow office using power tools, citing reports of a bomb threat, an online feed run by Mr. Navalny’s supporters showed.
Police shut down a TV studio at Mr. Navalny’s office during the same raid which had been broadcasting online news bulletins, but another studio in a different location continued to operate.
