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Topics: Russia, Ukraine, World News
Hannah Smith
More than 900 Russians have been detained by police amid widespread protests against the invasion of Ukraine.
Thousands of anti-war protesters gathered in Moscow, St. Petersburg and dozens of other Russian cities on Sunday, February 27, to demand an end to President Vladimir Putin's war in neighbouring Ukraine, with demonstrations taking place for a fourth straight day.
The protests have been met once again with a strong police response, with footage emerging of officers dressed in riot gear tackling people to the ground and dragging demonstrators away, including in many cases women and teenagers.
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Since Russia launched its invasion on February 24 an estimated 4,000 protesters have been detained across 44 cities in Russia, Sky News reports. As many as 900 protesters are believed to have been arrested today, though estimates currently vary.
The demonstrations themselves have been peaceful, as anti-war activists carry signs reading 'No War' through major streets. AP reports that in most cities the protests were smaller than Thursday's demonstrations, which saw several thousand people take to the streets from the western enclave of Kaliningrad to Siberia in the east.
Sunday's demonstrations coincided with the seventh anniversary of the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, one of Putin's fiercest critics. Nemtsov was shot in the back on a bridge near the Kremlin in Moscow, where anti-Putin demonstrators today gathered to pay tribute to the late politician and continue their protest of the war in Ukraine.
An ABC News reporter on the scene said riot police had 'flooded' the centre of the capital in an attempt to suppress would-be protests before they could begin, just hours after Putin ordered his military generals to place the country's nuclear deterrent forces 'on alert'.
Elsewhere, in Minsk – the capital city of Belarus – hundreds of protesters gathered following reports that Belarus was set to officially join Russia's invasion, with demonstrators met by a similarly heavy-handed response from police. Belarus has already been used as a staging ground for Russian forces, many of which have entered Ukraine from the country's border with Belarus.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has called directly on Russians to come out and oppose their country's invasion, and on Friday thanked those who demonstrated, saying 'to all citizens of the Russian Federation who are coming out to protest, I want to say we see you. It means that you heard us.'
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