Thousands of people have been arrested in Russia as a result of anti-war rallies

            According to an independent protest monitoring group, police detained over 4,300 individuals on Sunday during Russia-wide rallies against President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

According to footage shared on social media by opposition activists and bloggers, thousands of demonstrators screamed “No to war!” and “Shame on you!”

Earlier, the Russian Interior Ministry stated that police had detained over 3,500 persons, including 1,700 in Moscow, 750 in St. Petersburg, and 1,061 in other cities. According to the government, 5,200 individuals took part in the protests.

According to the OVD-Info protest monitoring group, at least 4,366 individuals have been detained in 56 different cities.

“The screws are being totally tightened — effectively, we are witnessing military censorship”, OVD-Info spokesperson Maria Kuznetsova told Reuters by phone from Tbilisi.

“We’re witnessing rather large protests today, even in Siberian cities, where we’ve seldom seen such a large number of arrests”.