Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny detained at protest rally over upcoming election

Russian police have detained opposition leader Alexei Navalny for organizing protest rallies in Moscow and several other cities in Russia, calling for the boycott of an upcoming presidential election.

The 41-year-old was wrestled into a police patrol wagon in Moscow on Sunday, just moments after he joined a demonstration to urge voters to boycott what he said would be a “rigged” presidential election on March 18.

Video footage posted on Navalny’s Twitter account earlier in the day showed him on Tverskaya, the capital’s main thoroughfare, a few hundred meters away from the Kremlin, to join several hundred of his supporters participating in the rally, which the authorities had said was “illegal.”

After walking a few meters among protesters, a group of helmet-clad police officers encircled him, wrestled him down on the pavement, and then dragged him feet-first into the patrol wagon, surrounded by a crowd of supporters and journalists, the footage showed. Navalny kept chanting “swindlers and thieves” as he was being dragged into the wagon.

Earlier on Sunday, Russian police broke into Navalny's Moscow office amid a live online broadcast of the nationwide protests.

“I have been detained. This means nothing. Come to Tverskaya. You are not rallying for me, but for yourselves and your future,” Navalny said on Twitter.

Polls show that Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose approval ratings top 80 percent, is on course to easily winning a fourth term. That prospect has angered Navalny’s supporters.

Opposition supporters said they expected “thousands” of people to take part in similar demonstrations in 118 towns and cities across Russia. There was no immediate word on whether those protests did occur, however.

Navalny, who has organized anti-government demonstrations before, has been imprisoned three times over the past year and charged with breaking the law for organizing unauthorized public meetings and rallies.

PressTV-Russian opposition supporters stage scattered rallies

The supporters of Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny stage scattered protest rallies in several cities in Russia.

Navalny, who was barred from running in the election by the central election commission in December over a corruption conviction, says his exclusion from the vote makes a sham of the ballot.

If President Putin wins the March election, as is projected, he will be in power until 2024.

The Kremlin has already noted that the vote will be fair, saying Navalny and his supporters have minimal support and are irresponsibly attempting to foment social anger, which could lead to turmoil.

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